


delinquents

by foxmagpie



Series: delinquents [2]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Bad Parenting, Child Neglect, Coercion, Drug Dealing, F/M, Flirting, Homecoming Dance, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Jealousy, Literati Vibes, Minor Violence, Opposites Attract, POV Alternating, POV Rio (Good Girls), Recreational Drug Use, References to Depression, Slow Burn, Threats of Violence, Tutoring, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 82,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21628063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: Sophomore year. 1993. Beth Marks is smart, but falling behind in school as responsibilities at home become too much. Rio Hidalgo is brilliant but lazy and does just enough to get by. When their math teacher comes up with a mutually beneficial plan for Rio to tutor Beth, the two find themselves drawn to each other despite all their differences.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Dean Boland, Beth Boland/Rio, Rio/Dylan, Ruby Hill/Stan Hill
Series: delinquents [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2022779
Comments: 460
Kudos: 1046





	1. Rio: Friday, Sept 17th-Monday, Sept 20th [Tutoring]

**Friday, September 17th**

Rio sits in the school parking lot. He takes a long, slow drag of his cigarette and glances at the dashboard—11:03. Just two more minutes and the bell will ring, and in the commotion of students spilling out of the double doors at the front of the school for off-campus lunch, he’ll be able to slip in without the office secretaries spotting him after ditching all of his classes the entire morning.

Sure, there was a good chance they’d notice once he wasn’t marked absent in Woods during 5th period, that they’d drag him up to the front office and slap him with detention, but sometimes he got lucky. Sometimes they were busy or had more pressing matters to attend to, and Rio could slip through the cracks.

The bell rings and Rio pulls open his door and stomps out his cigarette before making his way into the building. He nods at a few familiar faces but avoids most of the others. 

When he’s nearly across the parking lot, he gives a wide berth to a gaggle of dumb football jocks shoving each other and cracking jokes on their way to pile into one of the beds of one of their trucks, but one of the boys spots him.

“Yo!” the tall, gangly one calls. Rio recognizes him from math class, but Rio’s there so infrequently, he can’t remember his name even though he’s sold him either booze or weed at least once or twice before. “Hey, wait up!”

The guy jogs back toward Rio, who waits patiently but doesn’t bother to meet him halfway. The football player’s buddies hang back, exchanging glances like they’re still intimidated by Rio’s reputation. The gangly boy isn’t intimidated, though—which says less about his bravery than his intelligence. Rio absorbs this information. 

“What’s up?”

The guy glances around, and Rio wants to roll his eyes. It’s not that it’s a bad idea to check around for the security guard or even goody-two-shoes snitches, but you also can’t broadcast what you’re up to. “There’s a party tonight. After the game. Can you hook us up?”

Rio pretends to consider, then nods curtly once. “Yeah. Whatchu need?”

The boy details what they want, Rio sets a price, and then the boy grimaces. “Really? Could you, like, cut us a deal or something?”

Rio barks out a laugh and cocks an eyebrow. “What, man, you think I take coupons?”

The boy scratches his ear. “I don’t know. Isn’t there some sort of… friends and family discount?”

“Which one you think you are?” Rio stares at him blankly, refusing to break eye contact. The guy has an inch or two on Rio, but he still withers under Rio’s gaze.

“Alright, alright,” the boy says hurriedly. “I’ll get the money to you next period, okay? I gotta go to the ATM during lunch.”

“A’ight,” Rio says, and he slaps the guy’s hand to seal the deal. 

“By the way,” the guy says, walking backward away from Rio. “You missed a pop quiz in math today, so you might wanna swing by Mr. Stewart’s room.”

Rio nods, and the boy spins on the spot to jog back towards his friends. He’s wearing his football jersey, so when he turns around, Rio can see _BOLAND_ written across the back in big, block letters. 

He’ll have to remember that. The guy caved so easily to being overcharged, Rio wouldn’t mind having him as a regular customer. 

* * *

When Rio rounds the corner into Mr. Stewart’s classroom, it takes him a moment to register that he’s interrupting something.

“I don’t normally do this,” Mr. Stewart says, red pen poised in his hand as he scans over a piece of paper on his desk. A blonde girl stands opposite him, shifting her weight nervously. “But if it’s that important to you—”

“It is,” the girl insists, and then adds hastily, “Thank you.”

Rio doesn’t remember her name, either, but everything else about her is unforgettable. She’s smoking hot—and he knows from the times he’s actually shown up to English and Math that she’s one of those girls that loves raising her hand all straight and prissy in the air. _Loves_ hearing herself talk. _Loves_ being right. Of course she’d be the type to insist on getting a quiz graded immediately after the bell had rung.

Rio spins on his heel ready to leave the room when Mr. Stewart’s head jerks up and he points at Rio with his pen. “Not so fast, Mr. Hidalgo.”

“I can come back.”

“Like I believe that,” Mr. Stewart drawls. “When’s the last time I saw you? Two, three weeks ago?”

Rio rolls his eyes. They’ve only been in school a month, and his attendance has been spotty, but it’s not that bad. “Nah—” he starts to say, but the girl interrupts.

“Not so long as that. He was here last week.”

“You payin’ attention?” Rio asks, smirking at her. 

The girl blushes and she shakes her head. “You show up for quizzes and tests.”

Rio narrows his eyes at her. She’s right. Most people wouldn’t guess it, but he lives by a careful schedule. He likes to show up just enough to keep his grades up so that it keeps his parents off his back—and he can scrape by doing well on quizzes and tests with how Mr. Stewart weights his gradebook. But he wasn’t aware anyone noticed the pattern.

“Pop quiz today, though,” she says quietly, and Rio tilts his head, studying her. The blush that had just faded resurges. 

“Yeah, so… can I take it?” Rio asks, tearing his eyes away from her. 

Mr. Stewart grunts, but he passes over a sheet of paper. Rio plucks it from his hand and sits down at the nearest desk. Rio pats his jean pockets, but they’re empty. 

“Yo, you got a pencil I can borrow?”

Mr. Stewart looks up from his corrections and sighs, but the girl hands Rio a pencil from an outer pocket of her backpack. “You can keep it.”

“Thanks, darlin’,” Rio says, flashing her a grin. She isn't his normal type—she’s got 4.0 GPA stamped all over her—but he likes how easily he can get her chest to go all red and blotchy. 

“No talking,” Mr. Stewart reprimands. 

The next few minutes are silent, and Rio zips through the quiz. He stands just as Mr. Stewart _tsks_ and writes 4/10 on the top of the girl’s paper, right next to her name written in perfect cursive: Elizabeth Marks. There’s even a little heart dotting the _i,_ which just figures. 

“That was quick,” Mr. Stewart says skeptically, scanning over Rio’s paper now with the pen, but Rio isn’t listening. 

He’s looking at Elizabeth out of the corner of his eye, and he sees the way her bottom lip is trembling as she studies the paper from Mr. Stewart. 

“Can I retake this?” she asks, voice small. 

“Miss Marks, you know my policy on pop quizzes,” he says without looking up from Rio’s paper. “The purpose is to keep you on your toes. Keep up with your homework and studying and your scores will improve.”

“I’m trying,” she protests. “All my homework is done, I just don’t _get_ it.” She must feel Rio’s eyes on her because she shoots him a dirty look, like he’s being invasive. 

And maybe he is, because he’s staring at her solution to problems 1 and 2 now over her shoulder and he says, “You’re forgettin’ to distribute the exponents first.”

“What?” she snaps, like him pointing this out to her is offensive. 

Rio shrugs, unbothered. She _did_ forget. 

“Mr. Hidalgo is correct...” Mr. Stewart says, scrawling something at the top of Rio’s quiz. Rio can’t help but grin. “...which is why he earns a 10/10.”

“ _How_?” Elizabeth demands. “He’s never even here!” 

“Don’t need to be.” Mr. Stewart grumbles at this, and Rio turns to him. “What? Ain’t I acin’ all my tests?”

“I’d like to see you do a page of homework sometime, maybe even show up to class once in a while. Take some tips from Miss Marks.”

“Sounds like _she_ should be takin’ some tips from _me_ ,” Rio says smoothly. 

“Actually…” Mr. Stewart brightens. “Maybe that’s a good idea.”

“Huh?” Rio asks while Elizabeth purses her lips. 

“You should tutor Miss Marks.”

Rio balks. “Why would I do that?”

“Please, no,” Elizabeth protests weakly. “I’ll just—”

But Mr. Stewart isn’t listening to her. He speaks directly to Rio. “You’re too smart to waste your talents like you do. And by the time you realize that, it might be too late.”

“I’m not followin’.”

“College, Mr. Hidalgo. Life beyond these walls.” He gestures vaguely to the classroom. 

Rio scoffs. “Yeah, I ain’t goin’ to college.”

“That’s what you think _now_. But why take the option off the table by pulling D’s when you’re perfectly capable of A’s? I could excuse you from some homework assignments if you tutored Miss Marks. Help your grade out—make it more reflective of what you should be earning.”

Rio shakes his head. Stodgy old guys like Mr. Stewart are so oblivious, have no _idea_ that everyone isn’t on the same path. School makes Rio so bored, he wants to crawl out of his skin. Why would he want to pay thousands of dollars for a degree that will put him in an equally dull desk job when he can keep moving up doing what he’s doing and make more bank than any of the people in this room could possibly imagine? Grades don’t matter—not for what Rio plans to do with his life. 

”I don’t care about all that,” Rio says, waving his hand. “All that matters is doin’ enough to get by.”

Rio hears Elizabeth huff out an annoyed breath next to him, like she vehemently disagrees. If he had to guess, she’s already got her top three college choices mapped out with some pro/con lists. 

“So school doesn’t matter?” Mr. Stewart asks.

“Nah. Not to me.”

“Because you don’t need it for where you’re going?” His eyes are narrowed, and Rio senses a trap, but he doesn’t quite know what it is. 

He doesn’t care what Mr. Stewart thinks of him or his plans, though. “Nope.” 

“So what’s keeping you here?”

Rio rolls his shoulders. “Gotta be, don’t I?”

“Why?”

“It’s the law, ain’t it?”

“Somehow I don’t think you care much about the law,” Mr. Stewart says, brow arched. Rio runs his tongue along his teeth. He’s got Rio there. “I’m guessing it’s your mother—maybe your father?”

“I ain’t scared of them,” Rio says defiantly (which is at least half-true). 

“No, I don’t think that’s it. I think despite all the evidence to the contrary, you don’t want to disappoint them. I’ve called them, you know. Nice people, your folks.” 

Rio feels Elizabeth look over at him and he rocks his jaw, uncomfortable with how close it hits to the truth. The D’s are bad enough—not bad enough to make him do any better, true—but bad enough that he couldn’t stand the shame of bringing home anything worse. He doesn’t care about the things his parents care about—but he at least has enough sense to know that they bust their ass for him and his sisters, and he respects that they want more for their kids than they got for themselves. He just has a different idea about what _more_ means. 

Unable to come up with anything else to say, Rio reiterates, “I told you. I do enough to get by.”

“Except there’s always the detentions.”

“What about ‘em?”

“Did you know a certain amount of detentions results in a suspension? That a certain amount of suspensions result in an expulsion?”

Rio’s mouth forms a hard line. He knew _missing_ a detention resulted in an automatic suspension, which is the only reason he ever shows up to them—his mom would lose her goddamn mind if he was suspended again—but he didn’t know _that_. 

“That’s stupid.”

“And yet…” Mr. Stewart shrugs. 

“Well, I ain’t see what one has to do with the other. Tutorin’ Blondie ain’t gonna get me out of detention.”

“Hey—” she starts to interrupt, but nobody’s listening to her at this point. 

“It could.”

Rio raises an eyebrow. 

“You might not think so, Mr. Hidalgo, but I’ve got pull. I could make arrangements.”

The idea is tempting. If he’s got to be at school for detention _anyway_ , why not spend it teaching a hot girl math in the library stacks? It was the plot of many of the tapes he and Mar had found stashed under Mar’s brother’s bed, after all. Plus, he’d be raising his grade. His mother would be happy at least—and there was always a chance he might actually be able to sweet talk Blondie into joining him in the backseat of his car or something. It’d be challenging, but that was part of the fun. 

The plan wasn’t a total bust, all things considering.

“Fine,” Rio agrees. “I’ll do it.”

“Is anyone going to ask _me_ what _I_ think?” Elizabeth asks shrilly. Rio and Mr. Stewart both turn to look at her, and her ears are all red in frustration. “Or am I just a pawn in—in— _your_ stupid teaching moment and _your_ lame attempt to make your parents proud?” 

Rio lets out a breathy chuckle. He’s kind of surprised by this turn of events. She’s _mouthy_. He hadn’t taken her for the type to call a teacher out—and it makes him only more intrigued by her. 

Mr. Stewart opens his mouth to speak, but Rio beats him to it. “What, you like failin’ or somethin’?”

“ _No_ ,” she huffs, pulling her books closer to her chest. “But you can’t just act like my opinion doesn’t matter.”

“A’ight,” Rio says, and he lays his full focus on her, waiting for her to say something. “What’s your opinion?”

He can tell Elizabeth wants to squirm under his gaze, but she only straightens her back and stands taller. “No.”

“ _No?_ What, you got a problem gettin’ tutored by a kid from the hood or somethin’?”

“Alright—” Mr. Stewart starts, giving the hand signal for them to _simmer down_. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Elizabeth snaps, but he can tell by how her blush rises up her neck to her cheeks, by how _defensive_ she is, that he was at least a little bit right. She’s embarrassed by the idea that someone like _her_ needs someone like _him_ to help her. 

“So what’s the problem?”

“I—” she falters for a second. “I take the bus.”

“And I got a car.”

Elizabeth’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but she shakes it off and quickly asks, “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’ll drive you home.” It might increase the chances of getting her into the backseat, after all. 

“No!” Elizabeth blurts.

“Miss Marks, I’m surprised by you,” Mr. Stewart says gravely, and Elizabeth actually stamps her foot in frustration over the whole thing. Rio blinks in surprise. The girl’s practically a cartoon character. 

“That’s not—I’m not—” she lets out a frustrated groan. “I swear, it’s just that—”

“Mr. Hidalgo is willing to help you, and you would be helping him out as well. He’s even going above and beyond to try and make this work for you. What part of this idea are you so against?”

Elizabeth looks at her feet, defeated. “Nothing. It’s fine.”

“Nobody’s forcing you,” Mr. Stewart says, as if Elizabeth’s being perfectly absurd.

“No, I…” she looks up at Rio through her lashes, and she has the decency to at least look abashed. “I’ll do it.”

“Alright, good. You two sort out the details, and let me know. I’d like to eat my lunch now, if that’s alright,” Mr. Stewart says, shooing them out of the room.

When they spill out into the hallway, Elizabeth looks uncertainly at Rio, as if she’s not really sure what the next step is now that they’re on their own. 

“So… um… I guess this means…” Elizabeth bites her lip nervously and Rio thinks it looks a little obscene, the way she looks so utterly innocent and nervous at the same time that she’s walking around in _that_ body. 

“I’m gonna teach you.”

Elizabeth swallows and nods. “Okay.”

“Monday?”

“Monday.”

The bell rings. And with that, Rio reaches out and slips her pencil behind her ear. Elizabeth touches it gently, surprised, before Rio disappears into the throng of people. 

* * *

**Monday, September 20th**

“Don’t line up at the door! You know how I hate that,” Mrs. Valdez scolds, moving through the group of kids crowded at the front of the class to try and stand between them and the exit. The bell rings, though, as she’s jabbering on about it, and the final class of the day spills out into the hallway. 

Rio finds his best friend Mar at their shared locker. 

“Yo,” Rio says, and the boys slap hands. 

Mar unloads a textbook into the locker and pulls out a small baggie of weed that Rio had hidden in there. “Did you already sell this or is it up for grabs?”

“Nah, it’s mine.”

“Fuck yeah. You wanna hotbox your car or you wanna chill in the shed?”

“I can’t do neither,” Rio says, snatching the bag from Mar’s hand and stuffing it into his hoodie pocket. “I’m busy.”

“Nah, I mean after detention.”

“I ain’t got detention. I’m just busy.”

“With _what?”_ Mar asks, brows knit. 

A delicate pair of hands covers Mar’s eyes from behind, and suddenly Elena, five-foot-nothin’ and completely hidden by Mar’s body, coos into his ear, “Guess who!”

Mar pries Elena’s hands off his eyes and turns around to kiss her. This is becoming a daily routine now, the longer the two of them date, and despite the fact that it’s cheesy as fuck, Rio finds that he likes this girlfriend of Mar’s. She’s at least better than all the other ones. 

“Hi, Rio.” Elena smiles when they break the kiss. “How many classes did you actually attend today?”

“Two,” Rio says, grinning rakishly. 

“So we’ll see you in the shed after detention?”

“No detention today.”

“You’re joking. How do you keep getting away with this?”

“I’m just that good,” Rio jokes, brushing invisible dirt off his shoulder. “Nah, I’m kiddin’. I made a deal with Stewart. I’m gonna tutor and in exchange I get outta detention and I get extra credit.” 

“ _You’re_ gonna tutor someone?”

“Mmm.”

“F’real?” Mar asks, surprised that Rio would do this. “That’s just as bad as detention, man.”

“Nah,” Rio says, shaking his head and running his tongue along his teeth. 

Elena looks at him in confusion, but Mar picks up what Rio’s laying down immediately. “Oh, man. She hot?”

“Smokin’.”

“Who is it?” Elena pries, standing on her tiptoes and scanning the hallway, as if she would be able to spot someone that looked like they needed math tutoring. She eyes the people stuffing books into backpacks and slamming lockers shut and disappearing out of the double doors. 

“Elizabeth Marks.”

“Elizab—Beth? _Beth_ Marks?” Elena asks, surprise etched on her face. 

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Who is she?” Mar asks.

“Blonde, big blue eyes?” Rio shrugs. “Kinda nerdy. I got a couple classes with her, but I dunno much about her, ‘cept she’s fuckin’ terrible at math.”

“She’s in my home ec class. She’s the best cook out of all of us. Ooh, you should date her! Maybe she could fatten you up so you don’t have them skinny little chicken legs,” Elena teases, reaching out to pinch the soft skin on the back of Rio’s knee. 

“Shut the fuck up," Rio says, laughing, jumping away to dodge her. 

“I don’t have any idea who this girl is.”

“Yes, you do! She does the morning announcements,” Elena says, slapping Mar’s chest with the back of her hand. “You know the one. The one that never knows what to do with her hands?”

“Oh, fuck,” Mar says, hiding his laugh behind his hand. “ _That_ girl?”

Rio’s jaw sets. He’s never seen the morning announcements. He misses first period more than any other period in the day, and even when he does show up, he’s tardy. 

“Don’t be mean,” Elena scolds. 

“It ain’t a bad thing,” Mar says, tapping Elena on the nose. “You’re a fuckin’ nerd, too. But you’re right,” Mar concedes, turning toward Rio. “She is super hot. You trying to hook up with her?” 

Rio shrugs again because the idea is appealing, but he’s not sure how much effort the whole thing is worth. He senses she’ll be easy to fluster but harder to truly entice. As much as he was intrigued by her mouth, and as much fun as it might be, he’s not invested… yet. 

“What happened to Dylan?” Elena asks. “I thought you guys had a thing?”

“Yeah, she’s dope,” Rio says easily. “We’re chillin’. But it ain’t serious or nothin’.”

Elena sighs. “Is it ever with you?”

“Not everyone’s tryin’ to lock it down at fifteen,” Rio throws back at them. They both scowl. “A’ight. I’m out.”

“You sure you don’t wanna smoke a joint first?” 

Rio glances at the library doors, considering. “Fine. But quick.”

* * *

When Rio strolls into the library ten minutes later, Elizabeth’s stuffing her math book back into her bag and zipping it up. 

“You leavin’ already?”

She startles, her big Bambi eyes wide. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“Why?” Rio slides into the chair next to her. 

“Well,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear, “we said after school…”

“Ain’t it after school right now?”

“I mean, I thought it was _right_ after school.”

“Damn, chill. It’s been like five minutes.”

“Almost fifteen,” she promptly corrects. “And you weren’t in Math _or_ English, so I really had no evidence to believe that you would actually show up.”

Rio stares at her, fascinated. “Do you _ever_ relax?”

Elizabeth straightens her back, and Rio can see the tension in her shoulders. “Not all of us can afford to be so, as you say, _chill._ ”

The slang sounds absolutely foreign on her lips, and Rio can’t help it—she pulls a genuine laugh out of him. Once he’s done, he shakes his head, then fixes her with his full attention. She blushes underneath it. “Well, you know…” 

“What?” she asks, flustered. 

“I can help with that.”

Rio sees her eyebrows twitch as she tries to decipher what he means. “With what?”

“Helpin’ you relax.” 

Elizabeth matches his stare, but her eyes dart back and forth rapidly, like she’s trying to figure out if he’s saying what she thinks he is. She seems to be considering whether she should scold him or whether he would be able to weasel out of it, pretending to have been talking about something else. Her eyes narrow. And then, like she thinks she’s got him, like she thinks asking him straightforwardly might _embarrass_ him, she demands, “What, exactly, are you suggesting?”

 _God,_ Rio thinks. _Does she always sound like a forty-year-old mother?_

“Oh, there’s lots of ways we could do it, darlin’. Some more fun than others.”

Her entire face pales, and her jaw drops just slightly. He can see that she’s imagining it—them together—and he smirks as a blush creeps up her neck and into her cheeks. 

Just then they hear the library doors slam open, and they both turn to see the gangly football player—Benson, no, _Boland—_ come hurtling into the room. He scans the tables and sees the few people posting up in the library before he lands on the two of them, and then, to Rio’s surprise, he comes ambling over toward them. 

“Bethie?” he asks, and Rio furrows his brow. This guy doesn’t seem like he should even know Elizabeth’s name, let alone be in her social circle.

"Dean?" she asks, like she's surprised to see him.

“Misty said you were going to get tutored by this guy, but I thought she was just messing with me.” He gives a knowing look and a goofy smile to Rio, like somehow Elizabeth’s the butt of a joke that Rio doesn’t get. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rio asks before Elizabeth can say anything. 

“Beth’s too proud to ever ask for help,” Dean says, rolling his eyes. “I’ve offered, like, ten times.”

Elizabeth scowls. 

_Pathetic,_ Rio thinks. This guy can’t seem to take the hint.

“You’ve offered once,” Elizabeth mumbles. Rio watches her reach for a bracelet on her wrist and start tugging on it anxiously. It’s one of those cheap ones, with fake jewels lined on a dinky elastic string—the kind Rio’s little sister wears when she’s playing dress-up. “And I said _no thank you_ because you’re repeating this class.” 

Dean waves his hand as if her logic doesn’t make perfect sense. “Yeah, so I know it better than anyone. Definitely better than this guy—he’s never even there.” 

Dean smiles like it’s a joke, but before Rio can respond, Elizabeth snaps, “He’s actually very good at math.”

Rio sucks his lower lip into his mouth to keep from grinning. 

Dean chuckles and turns towards Rio. “I guess you’d have to be, doing what you do, huh?” Rio sees Elizabeth’s eyebrows pinch in confusion, but before she can ask what he means, Dean puts his attention back on her. “Well, do you think you can skip today, make it up tomorrow? Courtney’s parents went to Barbados for the week and her house is empty. We’re thinking... hot tub party?” 

He says it suggestively, and Rio runs his tongue along his bottom lip. He sort of can’t wait to see this guy crash and burn.

“Dean, I can’t.”

“Why not?” Dean pouts, pulling a chair out beside Elizabeth and crowding into her space. He nips at her ear and whispers something to her, which makes Elizabeth glow red. 

Rio stares at them, dumbfounded. This guy ain’t _trying_ to get with her. He already _is._ Although he doesn’t know her well, Dean Boland is just about the last person on the list of all the people Rio could ever imagine someone like Elizabeth Marks to be with. The guy even ranks lower than _himself._

 _Well,_ Rio thinks. _This makes things slightly more interestin’._

“Come on, Bethie. Everyone’s gonna be there—Kyle, Jeremy, Eric—“

She snaps her bracelet against her wrist. “They don’t even like me.”

Dean rolls his eyes again. “You just need to learn to take a joke. They’re just giving me a hard time. They think it’s funny I’m dating a sophomore. Plus, the girls are going to be there. Stacy, Natalie, even Misty—”

Elizabeth bites her lip. “Misty’s going?”

Rio can hear the jealousy in her voice, but Dean remains oblivious. “Yeah! So, what do you say?” 

There’s a long pause as Elizabeth seems to consider it. She glances at Rio, though, and then says, “I can’t. He’s here to tutor me. I can’t just _leave._ It’s rude.”

“Aw, come on. He doesn’t care. Do you care, man?” Dean asks, trying to get Rio to side with him. 

“Elizabeth can do whatever she wants,” Rio says neutrally—mostly because he wants to see how this plays out. 

Elizabeth looks up at Rio quickly, eyebrows raised at how he called her _Elizabeth_ —or maybe just at the way that he seemed content to let her decide for herself. Then she looks at her lap, twisting the bracelet back and forth. Quietly she says, “Dean, I really need the tutoring. Maybe another time.” 

Dean sighs. “Fine. Kiss goodbye, at least?”

Elizabeth blushes furiously, but quickly kisses him chastely on the lips. Dean tries to go for another, but Elizabeth pushes him away. “Come on, Bethie—“

“We’re in the library,” she hisses. 

Dean sighs, exasperated. “You’re no fun.” But then he quickly shoots up out of the chair and exits the room, leaving the two of them alone. 

They sit in silence for a moment, the air tense. 

“So…” she starts, clearing her throat. 

“So… _that_ guy, huh?”

Pink dusts Elizabeth’s cheeks, but she straightens herself, as if she refuses to let Rio embarrass her. “Yes. We’ve been together four months.” She says it almost like it’s an accomplishment, and Rio figures it sort of is, putting up with that guy for so long. 

“You’re kiddin’.”

“No. Why would you say that?”

“Mostly ‘cause that dude can’t read you for shit.”

“What does that mean?”

“Does he know you're mad jealous over this Misty girl?”

“I am not!” she protests, frowning. 

“Are too.”

“Well, only because she flirts with him right in front of me like I don’t even exist,” Elizabeth says quickly, the words spilling out of her mouth. 

“Mmm. You tell him that?” Elizabeth glares at him, like expressing her feelings is a preposterous suggestion. “You tell him you hate his friends?”

“I don’t _hate_ them.”

“Yeah. You do. It’s a’ight, though. I hate ‘em, too.”

“Do you even know them?” 

“I know they dumb as shit—and annoying, too. Think the world owes them everythin’. Think they don’t have to work for nothin’.”

Elizabeth’s mouth twitches, but she doesn’t say anything. 

“Last question.”

“What?” she asks. 

“You ever tell him you can’t fuckin’ stand bein’ called _Bethie?”_

Elizabeth looks taken aback for a moment, and then she resets her face to neutral. “It’s just a nickname,” she defends. “So my name fits it with all the other girls. Court _ney_. Nata _lie_. Sta _cy._ Beth _ie._ ”

"Mist _y_." Rio tilts his head and squints his eyes, looking at her. He likes the way that she always straightens up when he studies her, the way she fronts that he doesn't make her nervous when he clearly does. “Why you shrinkin’ yourself to fit in with people you don’t even like?”

“You don’t know me,” Elizabeth snaps, but she instantly starts playing with her bracelet again. She’s upset, he realizes, because she’s freaked out that he _does._ That he sees right through her. 

Rio shrugs, as if admitting defeat. “Whatever you say… Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth looks at him curiously. “Why are you calling me that? Everybody calls me Beth.”

“Yeah, but _I_ know you think of _yourself_ as Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth stares at him. “How could you possibly know that?”

“‘Cause,” Rio says simply. “It’s what you write on your papers. With a li’l heart over the _i_ and everythin’.”

Elizabeth opens her mouth to say something, but seems to find herself speechless. 

Rio leans over into her space, face coming dangerously close to hers. He can smell her shampoo—something peachy and sweet. He expects her to jerk away, but she doesn’t. She just sucks in a breath, still as can be, eyes darting back and forth wildly. 

He could count her eyelashes if he wanted. He could brush his lips against her neck. 

Then, just as suddenly, he straightens back up, throwing her math book that he’s dug out of her backpack onto the table. 

“Ready?” he asks her.

Elizabeth exhales and shakes herself off. She swallows, pushing her hair back behind her ear again. 

“Mhm,” she says, like she’s fine. 

Like neither of them know that he has her.


	2. Beth: Monday, Sept 20th-Friday, Sept 24th [Locker]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth & Rio finish their first tutoring session and he drives her home. Later that week, Beth tries to help save Rio from getting in trouble.

**Monday, September 20th**

Beth had been sure he was about to kiss her. He’d leaned across her, put his face right up next to hers, looked _up_ at her, and _grinned._ She’d frozen, terrified, absolutely uncertain what to do and then—

Then he had thrown her textbook on the table and asked if she was ready to begin.

It had been a relief. 

It _had_.

But there had been a moment—just a moment—where she had wondered how soft his lips might be. 

She catches herself thinking it again, staring at his mouth as he nibbles on _her_ pencil, frustrated that he can’t seem to figure out where she went wrong on one of the math problem. 

“What the fuck,” he whispers, mostly to himself, and that snaps Beth out of her reverie.

What is she _thinking?_ She has a boyfriend. She shouldn’t be thinking about kissing other boys—especially boys like—like— _him._

 _God, it’s embarrassing_ , Beth thinks. He’s tutoring her and she doesn’t even know his first name. 

Regardless, this boy was _not_ Beth’s type. She didn’t know much about him—since he was always absent—but she had enough sense to know that he was up to no good. She’d heard the rumors. 

Her mother would call him a _delinquent_. She would tell Beth to stay away from him, warn that he was a bad influence.

Or she would have, back then. Before Beth’s dad left. Before she stopped looking for new jobs. Before she stopped getting out of bed at all. Just… _before_. 

Now she didn’t do much of anything, and it was up to Beth to make her own decisions, so here she was, being tutored by this boy that showed up with no book and no pencil, who had glassy eyes and laughed too easily. 

He clearly didn’t care about school or extracurriculars, and he also didn’t seem to care what people thought about him—he cussed every other sentence and it seemed like he was purposefully trying to agitate her. The funny thing though, was that he seemed sort of _amused_ when she snapped at him. Dean was always so sensitive when Beth got irritated with him, always whining and wondering whether she was on her period. It drove her crazy. 

This boy drives her crazy, too, but it doesn’t feel the same, and there’s something about that which terrifies her. 

She doesn’t even _like_ him, so why is she still imagining what it might be like to bite his lip?

“Here it is,” the boy says, pointing on the page to Beth’s mistake. Daydream shattered, Beth jerks back, as if startled by him speaking to her. He looks over at her, one eyebrow raised in surprise. “You a’ight?”

“Yes,” she says, crossing her arms tightly. “I’m fine.”

He looks at her like he knows exactly what she was thinking about, and it sends a jolt of electricity down her spine. 

How does he _do_ that?

 _This is his fault,_ she decides. He was the one that planted the idea in her earlier, saying that dumb thing about helping her relax, about how some ways were more fun than others. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” she demands.

“Like what?” the boy asks, mock innocence.

“You know.”

“Nah. I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?” He leans against the table and crosses his arms, looking over at her, but one hand twiddles her pencil and pushes the eraser into his plump bottom lip. He catches Beth staring at his mouth and smirks. “Stop lookin’ at me like that,” he says, parroting her. “You’re gonna give me the wrong idea, darlin’.”

Beth huffs, flustered. “Don’t call me that. I have a boyfriend.”

“I remember,” he says, almost lazily. “It don’t mean nothin’.” He lets the suggestion hang between them, but just before Beth gets truly offended he adds, “Just a nickname. I thought you didn't care what people called you?”

Beth opens her mouth to argue, but suddenly a shadow looms over them. They both look up to see Ms. Colte the librarian arching a brow at them. “Did you two notice I turned off the lights? Library’s closed.”

“Oh,” Beth says, glancing up at the ceiling. Sunlight still spills into the room through the windows, so she hadn't even registered it—though maybe she should have. Looking around, she sees the library is now completely deserted besides the two of them. “I’m sorry.”

Beth hastily packs up her math book and Rio slides her pencil behind his ear. Beth doesn’t ask for it back. She figures he should just keep it, considering his teeth have made soft indents all over the wood at this point. They walk out of the library together, and Rio goes to turn left towards the parking lot while Beth goes to turn right towards the path that would lead her—very slowly—back to her apartment.

“Where you goin’?”

“Home.”

“Thought I was givin’ you a ride.”

“I’m fine walking. It’s not that far,” Beth lies. 

“Can’t be that close if you ride the bus.”

Beth hesitates, shifting her weight. It’s just that… she doesn’t want him to see where she lives. Besides Ruby, she’s never let _anyone_ see where she lives. Not even Dean. He saw her old house, where she lived when her dad was still around, but once she moved, she made sure that they always go to Dean’s house. Whenever he picks her up, she walks ten blocks down to a café by her old place, pretends she was there doing homework to escape the chaos of Annie. 

“What, you afraid to be in an enclosed space with me?” the boy teases. 

Beth hadn’t even thought of that, and she flushes at the idea. ”Are you even old enough to have a passenger in the car?”

Rio rolls his eyes. “I’m sixteen. I got my license. The other rules are bullshit.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of that,” the boy says, squinting at her.“You goin’ for your Girl Scout badge in makin’ everythin’ ten times harder than it’s gotta be or somethin’? C’mon.”

He strides away from her, and after a moment more of waffling, Beth scurries to catch up.

When they get outside, the boy’s car—some old brown Cadillac—is the only one left in the student parking lot.

“Wow,” Beth says. “That’s… quite the car.”

“I can sense that you’re fuckin’ with me,” the boy says. “And I gotta tell you right now: I won’t tolerate that sorta disrespect for Minnie.”

He unlocks the passenger door for her, and Beth slides onto the tanned leather bench seat. 

“Minnie?” she asks, when the boy gets in on the driver’s side. “I’m going to guess that’s _not_ for Minnie Mouse.”

“Nope.” He turns the key in the ignition and the car rumbles to life.

“Well, what’s it for, then?” she presses. He can be so difficult to talk to. 

“It’s short for Minerva.”

“Like the goddess of war?”

As he reverses out of the parking spot, the boy looks over at her, impressed. “Exactly.”

“Cool,” Beth says softly. She decides, then, that this is as good of a time as any to ask. “Um, speaking of…”

“Speaking of the Roman goddess of wisdom and warfare? Didn’t know you had so much to say on the topic.” He pulls out up to the exit of the parking lot. “Left or right?”

“Shut up,” Beth snaps, laughing, pointing for him to take a right, and the boy laughs, too. “No, speaking of names… I, um, don’t know yours.”

“You know the exact dates I show up to school, but you ain’t know my name? Damn, Elizabeth.”

Beth feels a warmth spread across her ribcage when she hears him call her Elizabeth again. He was right—it _was_ what she wanted to be called. _Beth_ felt too boring, too plain. She wanted to be more than that. 

“I don’t know the _exact_ dates you show up to school,” she denies. “I just notice patterns.”

“Right,” he says, glancing at her. “You ain’t payin’ attention to _me._ Just patterns.”

She wishes he would stop making comments like that. The make her feel like they’re flirting. And they are _not_ flirting. 

“Exactly,” Beth says, pointing again to direct him towards her neighborhood. 

The boy laughs again. “You a trip, you know that?”

Beth doesn’t say anything, just lets the comment wash over her. It doesn’t sound like an insult.

“Rio.”

“Rio?”

“Yeah. That’s my name.”

“I’ve never heard that name before.”

“Well, now you have.”

 _Rio,_ she thinks. And then she thinks, _I like it._

And then, because she’s been thinking about it since Dean made the joke about him being good at math, she blurts, “Do you sell drugs?”

“‘Scuse me?”

“I’ve heard rumors.”

Rio cocks an eyebrow at her. She gestures again for him to take a left. “You hear rumors about me, but you don’t know my name?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure anybody really knows your name.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rio says, barking out a laugh. “You cold, Elizabeth.”

Beth shrugs shyly. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t answer mine.”

Beth’s brows knit in confusion. “Which question?”

“How you think I’m lookin’ at you?”

Beth quickly looks away and ignores him, cheeks burning brightly. She reaches for the radio knob. “What kind of music do you listen to?”

Rio whistles. “Wow. You have just about the worst methods of diversion I’ve ever seen.”

Beth turns up the volume, drowning him out, but finds herself looking over at him, shocked. “Is this… _jazz?”_

“What’s wrong with jazz?” he asks crossly.

“Are you ninety years old?”

Rio rolls his shoulders. “I like it.”

“Oh my god. You’re ninety years old.” Beth shakes her head, giggling. “You are so _not_ what I expected.”

“That a good thing?” Rio asks, stealing a glance at her.

Beth bites her lip, because she thinks the answer is _no_ , but not for the reasons he might think. “Yeah. That’s a good thing.”

“Cool,” he says, staring straight ahead, a smirk playing at his lips. He says it so softly Beth’s not sure if she was supposed to hear it.

“Take a left on Lincoln,” she tells him, pretending that she didn’t. 

They drive, not speaking, just listening to the sounds of saxophones and trumpets and trombones. Beth wills herself to look out her window, but even though he sits across the seat, she feels like they’re too close. Like she’s hyper-aware of how near he is.

“Turn here,” she says finally. 

It’s not her street, but it’s close enough, and there’s this big, two-story white house with blue shutters that she _loves_. There’s a tire swing out front and a garden full of oleander and peonies. It’s the house she wishes she lived in. 

“This is me,” she says when Rio’s car is nearly at the dream house.

Rio runs his tongue along his teeth and nods, like this is exactly what he expected her house to look like and like he’s somehow annoyed by it. 

“So, um. Thanks,” she says, reaching for the door handle, but pausing before she opens it.

“Yeah.”

They stare at each other for a moment, Beth too afraid to ask when he might want to tutor her again, Rio thinking god knows what. 

Then he says, “I do sell drugs.”

Beth blinks, taken aback. “Oh. Okay.”

“Yeah. Figured you’d find out anyway, considerin’ I’ve sold ‘em to your boyfriend.”

Beth fiddles with the hem of her dress. “Alright.”

“That change things?”

She doesn’t know whether he means with her and Dean, or with her and Rio. She surprises herself, though, when she decides it must be the second one and firmly says, “No. It doesn't.”

Rio hums, and then says, "I could say the same thing for you, you know." He stares at her like she’s the only thing in the world. It makes Beth want to squirm. It makes her want to look away. 

“What do you mean?” she asks thickly. 

“You ain’t what I expected.”

She almost dares to ask him whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but she chickens out at the last second, clearing her throat instead. 

Rio laughs softly, making her feel, once again, that he sees right through her.

“Tomorrow?” he asks.

“Tomorrow,” she agrees, and she suddenly realizes she’s smiling. 

He leans over toward her again, and she freezes. Rio pulls the pencil out from behind his ear and slides it behind her own before reaching over her to open the door for her. 

Beth nods aimlessly, and then she gets out of his car. 

She waits until he turns the corner off the street, then another two minutes, before she makes the trek four more blocks and across the train tracks to her run-down apartment, fiddling with the pencil between her fingers the entire time.

* * *

**Friday, September 24th**

Beth plops down in the seat next to Ruby on the bus. 

“Hey, girl.”

“Morning,” Beth says, but then her stomach grumbles loudly, and she blushes, embarrassed.

“Here,” Ruby says, digging in her backpack and pulling out a PB&J. “Eat it.”

“I’m fine.”

“B, shut up and take it.”

Beth hesitates, but she caves. She really is hungry. “Thanks.”

Beth starts unwrapping the sandwich from the clear plastic wrap, and then Ruby says, “What do you have left in your cupboards?”

Beth takes a small bite, forcing herself not to devour the thing whole. “Five packets of ramen. A can of refried beans.” Beth concentrates, trying to remember. She snaps her bracelet against her wrist. “And I think we have a can of pears and a can of peaches.”

“And that’s supposed to last you until when?”

“The first, when my mom gets her unemployment check. I think we only get a few more though, and then I don’t know what happens…”

“Beth, are you _sure_ you don’t want to talk to the school counselor? I mean, at the very least you can get on free lunch. Stop starving yourself for the last week of the month.” 

“No,” Beth says quickly, looking around to make sure that nobody has overheard their conversation. “I don’t want them getting worried and like, prying into our business. My mom’s going to get better, and then this whole thing will be behind us.”

“Are you sure? I thought part of the reason your dad left was because—”

“I’m sure,” Beth says definitively. She takes another bite of the sandwich, so she doesn’t have to say anything more. 

Ruby nods, looking out the window. Beth can tell that Ruby wants to believe her, but Beth knows she doesn’t. This isn’t the first time they’ve had the conversation—and Ruby’s right. Deborah Marks hadn’t just been inclined to spend her whole day in bed hidden from the world once her husband left. It had been part of the _reason_ he left, part of the reason he’d gone and found a new girlfriend, a new family. First, he’d started spending more time away on weekends, making up excuses about work and deadlines. Then, he’d started getting home later and later every weeknight. Finally, he stopped coming home at all. Debbie lost her last job, then their house, and if anyone found out, Beth was sure that next, she would lose them—Beth and Annie.

“Stop,” Ruby says gently, laying a hand over Beth’s own, which is snapping her bracelet against her wrist over and over. 

“Sorry,” Beth mumbles.

“Don’t apologize. Just stop hurting yourself.”

“Oh, no, that's not what I'm doing,” Beth fibs. “The bracelet is just not really that comfortable. My arm hair’s always getting caught in it.” This part, at least, is true. 

“Have you considered… not wearing it?”

“It was a present from Dean,” Beth counters.

“So? Maybe Dean should buy you nicer presents.”

“Ruby,” Beth scolds.

“What? That thing cost, like, three dollars. _Maybe_.” 

They go back and forth about it, until Ruby finally wins once they’re off the bus and at their locker, loading up their books for the first few periods. Beth reluctantly deposits the bracelet in her locker, convinced it might actually be nice to go one day without it ripping out all the hair on her wrist. 

* * *

When Beth walks into Mr. Stewart’s room, Rio is there, turned away from her, slouching languidly in his chair. _That_ means there’s a quiz. 

Beth’s breath hitches. She straightens her back, presses her binder close to her chest, and avoids looking at him as she goes directly to her seat. She can see him out of the corner of her eye, two rows to her left, one seat up from her. But she pretends he doesn’t exist.

It’s not that she wants to be rude, it’s just… she doesn’t know how to act around him now, around other people. He’s tutored her every day this week, and she’s gotten almost… comfortable with him. 

The first fifteen minutes are always the same: he likes to talk about anything in the world other than math. In particular, he seems to like to find areas where they disagree and fight about them, whether that’s their opinion on teachers, rules, trends, movies—even current events. Sometimes he likes to ask her personal questions about herself that Beth likes to avoid answering—until Beth gets irritated and snaps that unlike him, she actually has responsibilities she needs to get to, and then he settles down and tutors her.

He’s not a good teacher, exactly, but he’s getting better. He has trouble realizing that he needs to slow down and explain things; he always assumes that because it makes sense to his own brain, it must make perfect sense to hers.

Still, he keeps showing up… even though she hasn’t seen him in any of his other periods all week.

Rio turns around and looks at her, but Beth looks quickly away in the opposite direction, pretending it’s a coincidence. She chats idly to the girl next to her, waiting for the bell to ring, waiting to stop feeling his eyes on her. She doesn’t. When she glances back at him, he’s still watching her. He grins, mischievous, and Beth’s mouth tugs into a small smile, and then she looks down at her hands, as if they’re deeply interesting to her.

The bell rings, and a minute later Dean comes crashing into the room with some long-winded explanation about why he’s late and why Mr. Stewart shouldn’t mark him tardy. 

She sees Rio shake his head over the whole thing, and Beth cringes.

“We’re starting with a quiz today,” Mr. Stewart announces, holding a stack of papers. “Get your pencils out…”

* * *

Everybody crowds at the door in the last minute of class, and Rio’s right behind Beth. She stands rigid, willing herself not to turn around. 

Dean's just in front of her chatting with a boy on his football team about how brutal practice was last night, and Beth’s supposed to be part of the conversation, but all she can focus on is the feel of Rio’s breath on her neck.

She feels a finger poke into her waist just below her backpack, and she twists away from it.

“How’d it go?” Rio whispers, almost like he knows she doesn’t want other people to know that they know each other.

“Good… I think,” she murmurs. She hadn't been fully confident in herself—but she'd definitely felt better about her performance than her last several quizzes.

“That’s good.” Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him nod once, then look away from her.

Beth doesn’t know why, but her cheeks burn. 

The bell rings, and she loses Rio to the crowd immediately.

She wonders who his friends are, what he does for lunch.

“Bethie?” Dean asks. She looks up, startled to see him so close to her, confusion etched on his face as he watches her stare across the hallway, seemingly at nothing.

“Sorry,” she says, refocusing herself. “I’m out of it today.”

“Where’s your bracelet?” Dean asks, reaching for her wrist. “Did you lose it?”

“No, I, um, just took it off for the day.”

“Why?” His voice sounds small and fragile, like he can’t understand why Beth would ever take it off. “I thought you liked it…”

“I do,” Beth insists. “I love it. It just… didn’t match my outfit,” she finishes lamely. She can’t tell him it’s uncomfortable. 

“Oh,” he says, doubtful. 

“Let’s stop by my locker. I’ll put it back on,” Beth promises, and he instantly brightens. 

“Alright. Wanna do Dickie’s for lunch?” 

Beth nods. She has nothing to eat, and no money to buy anything, but she can get away with that. None of Dean’s girl friends eat half the time, either, claiming to be on “diets.” On one hand, it helps her blend in. On the other, it means Dean usually doesn’t share, thinking offering to do so would be insensitive to her supposed goal of losing weight. 

* * *

“Can you refill this for me?” Marianne, one of the front office secretaries, asks Beth, holding out her empty coffee mug. 

“Of course,” Beth says, popping up from her desk. In her second-to-last period of the day, she helps the office ladies out as a TA. She puts flyers in the teacher mailboxes, delivers notes to kids in their classes, picks up print jobs from the copy room, basically whatever they need.

It’s a boring job, mostly, but she gets a credit for it, and there are lots of days where she can just sit there doing her homework. That’s nice, since it means that she can focus on Annie when she gets home. 

When Beth comes back out from the teacher’s lounge, she sees Ruby’s crush standing in front of her desk, scratching his ear and looking embarrassed. 

“Hey,” she says sweetly. “What’s up?”

“Beth, right? Morning announcements?” 

“Yeah. Stan?”

Stan smiles, but cocks his head, confused at how she knows him. “Yeah.”

“Ruby talks about you a lot,” Beth explains, and she sees Stan try to tamp down a smile. Ruby keeps insisting Stan just sees her as a friend, but from all the stories Ruby tells about the way he flirts with her in band class? Beth knows better. “She says you’re _really_ good at piano.”

“ _Me?_ Have you heard _her_ on clarinet? That girl could bust out a solo that could knock your socks right off.”

Beth laughs because, yes, she has heard Ruby practicing her clarinet—and she also knows that that is absolutely not true. 

“Can I help you with something?” Beth asks. 

“Oh, yeah. June said you had the file with all the locker combos in your desk. I… forgot mine,” he says sheepishly.

“ _Again_ ,” June adds from across the room. 

“Again,” Stan admits. He shrugs. “I don’t use it very much.”

Beth nods and opens the file cabinet drawer. “What’s your last name?”

“Hill.”

“Alright,” Beth says, and she flies to the H’s, skipping past Hanson, Jessica; Happala, Patti; Heller, Katy; Henderson, Gary; Hidalgo, Christopher—she stops, because that’s Rio’s last name. Is his first name really _Christopher?_ She ignores the tightening she feels in her belly and pulls out Hill, Stanley. “Okay, here you go.”

Stan writes down the three-digit code on a loose slip of paper and waves goodbye, handing the combination back to Beth. June calls out after him, “Keep that paper this time, huh!”

The secretaries laugh and roll their eyes. They often have these little moments where they make fun of other kids in front of Beth—acting like she’s in on the joke because she’s so mature, because, as they say, _she isn’t like her classmates._

“Some kids would forget their own head if it wasn’t screwed on, I swear,” Marianne says, sipping on her coffee. “Oh, look who it is.” She nods through the glass window that opens to the foyer at none other than Rio. “Looks like the Golden Boy skipped the first half of the day, showed up for one period, then took a nice, long lunch, and is now deigning to come back for his last periods. Hmph.”

“Can you believe the strings Stewart pulled to get him out of detention? I can’t.”

Seemingly frozen to her spot with Stan’s slip of paper still in her hand, Beth watches as Rio strides right towards the office. 

“Me either,” Marianne grumbles. “That kid needs _more_ consequences, not less. He’s never going to learn otherwise.”

“Try telling that to Mr. New-Age-Alternative-Methods,” June says, shaking her head. “I just can’t believe Ipson bought it. That boy is in his office every other week. We all _know_ he’s going to drop out, just like every other kid that gets wrapped up in the same crap. Excuse my language,” she says, peeking over at Beth. 

“Oh, uh, no problem,” Beth squeaks out. “Can I get you a refill on your coffee?” She wants to disappear before Rio reaches the office. She would be mortified if Marianne and June learned that _she’s_ the reason Rio’s gotten out of detention. 

“I’m fine, dear, but thanks.”

Beth quickly reseats herself in the chair, hoping that Rio might not notice her behind the desk if her head is down—but no such luck. 

The door opens and Rio pops in. “‘Ey,” he says, nodding at Beth. She just stares at him wide-eyed, unable to speak. 

Instead of reading much into it, Marianne pounces on him. “Aiming to make it to three out of eight periods today, Mr. Hildalgo?”

“Yep,” Rio says, hands in his pockets, completely unbothered. 

June sniffs derisively at him, frowning. “So that tutoring program doesn’t seem to be helping, hm?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Rio says, and Beth wills him, with all her might, not to say anything. “Girl felt pretty good about her quiz today. That’s somethin’.”

“I meant with your attendance,” June explains. 

Rio shrugs, then puts his hand to his heart, mock-sincere. “You know, I feel better just knowin’ I’m makin’ a difference.”

Fed up with him, Marianne hastily fills out a late slip. “There’s still ten minutes left of fifth period. _Don’t_ think just because you’re this late, I’m just sending you off to sixth. Check in with your teacher about what you missed.”

Rio nods, but his smirk tells Beth he definitely will not do that. He tips his head at her before he exits the office, and Beth feels like she can breathe again. 

“Well, we know what _he_ was up to between lunch and now,” June says. “Did you smell it on him, too?”

“How could I not?” Marianne says, pinching her nose. “Plus, his eyes were all red.”

“Locker sweep?” June suggests. 

“If we found something, it _would_ mean an automatic suspension. Might teach him a thing or two…”

Beth has heard them suggest this for other kids that showed up to school reeking of pot, too, so she panics, knowing that they’ll do it. She remembers watching Richie Mack get dragged up to Ipson’s office, then escorted off the premises by his mother. 

That can’t happen to Rio. She _needs_ him as her tutor. 

_Plus,_ a small voice thinks in her head. _Mr. Stewart seemed to know he didn’t want to disappoint his parents._

Beth looks at Stan’s locker combo still in her hands. She pretends not to pay attention as June pages the resource officer to come to the front office, and slips Stan’s combo back into the file, sneakily pulling out Rio’s combo at the same time. She slams the cabinet shut, turns the key to the locked position, and then clears her throat. 

“I’m going to use the ladies’ room,” she announces. 

“Alright.”

Once she’s outside of the office, she studies the paper in her hands. Locker 357. Combination: 21-83-36. It’s only about twenty lockers away from her own, but she’s never noticed. She quickly memorizes the information, then beelines straight for E Hall. 

She’s never done anything like this before. Never really broken a rule, never tried to help someone else break a rule. 

The hallways are empty, and she reaches Rio’s locker quickly. She swallows, then stands on her tiptoes and turns the dial to 21, refusing to look around to see if anyone’s watching, refusing to look at all suspicious. 

Rio’s locker opens with a pop, and at first, she doesn’t see anything. Just a psychology textbook, a collection of folded up notes, and a beanie. 

Beth peeks under the book, then pulls it out to scour through its pages. Nothing. 

She knows she should reach for the beanie next but she hesitates, noticing a pink lipstick kiss decorating one of the notes. She doesn’t know why, but her palms feel sweaty and her heart seems to lodge itself in her throat. Before Beth even knows what she’s doing, she looks around the locker door to make sure no one is coming and then hastily tears the note open. 

She exhales a breath she didn’t know she was holding when she sees in bubbly script: _To Mar, Love Elena_ with a dozen hearts at the top of the page. 

It must be a note for Rio’s locker-mate.

Beth carefully folds the note back up and replaces it, and then, before she can stop herself, she starts rummaging through the rest of the notes, checking to see if they’re all for Mar. 

She finds that most of them are. Except one. 

It’s folded in that fancy way with the pull tab, and the handwriting is different. _RIO_ is written in big, block letters, but there’s no signature that suggests who it’s from. 

_The block letters aren’t really clear that it’s a girl,_ Beth rationalizes. Then she shakes her head, because that’s not what she’s concerned about, not really. _It could be some incriminating evidence about a deal, and if_ that’s _the case…_

Beth pulls the tab so that the note unfolds and reads it, eyes scanning quickly over the words: 

_heyyyyyyyyyy_

_how was math class? I’m hella bored, just sitting here thinking about u =] =] my parents aren’t gonna be home tonite if u wanted to chill?? w/b this time! haha_

_-D._

Beth blushes, swiftly refolds it as best she can—though she’s never known how to do it with the pull tabs, that’s more Ruby’s thing—and then she throws it back into Rio’s locker. 

Beth’s mind races. 

Is the note old, or does Rio have a girlfriend? If he does, why is he flirting with her so much? Or, no, not flirting. More like… teasing. Then again, he knows she has a boyfriend—and that doesn’t seem to be stopping him from trying to rile her up. 

Beth huffs. 

But then… judging by the note, Rio’s relationship seemed to be more serious than hers and Dean’s. The girl was trying to make arrangements to hang out _when her parents weren’t home._

Beth cringes, thinking of the times Dean has tried to do the same, the way that she had gotten an instant stomach ache just thinking about it. 

She wonders if Rio went. If he even wrote back. It didn’t look like it—the note was still folded perfectly, and she couldn’t really imagine someone like Rio knowing how to fold notes like that. Maybe that meant…?

She shakes her head. She’s being ridiculous. Whether or not Rio has a girlfriend is irrelevant. They aren’t even really _friends._ She can barely _stand_ him. Beth’s curiosity just got the better of her because she doesn’t understand why he keeps making all those suggestive comments to her, when it would be clear to anyone with eyes that he can’t really _mean_ them. Beth’s got to be just about as far away from his “type” as he is hers… 

Right?

Just then, Beth hears the squeak of rubber on the tile floor, and realizes that someone is coming. She’s run out of time—and if it’s anyone she knows, they’ll know she’s not in her own locker.

“Shit,” she mutters to herself, and she digs her hand into the beanie. 

She can feel it—a small plastic baggie, some wadded up papers of some kind—and she goes to yank her hand back out so that she can fling the locker shut and quickly stride away—only her bracelet gets caught on the interior lining of the hat. 

“Shit, shit, shit,” she hisses, at the same time that she thinks, _Rio_ is _a bad influence._

Trying to pry the hat apart from the snag on her bracelet, Beth tugs hard on the beanie with her other hand until some sort of string is pulled taut and breaks. 

She glances to her right just beyond the door of the locker. She can _see_ somebody’s shoe peeking around the corner. 

She has a split second to make a decision: slam the locker shut without taking anything, or try and swiftly stuff the contraband in her pocket and hope that whoever it is doesn’t see it happen.

“Beth?”

_“Shit.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I was going to post this tomorrow, but then medievalraven was amazing and beta'ed it for me and I got impatient (like usual).


	3. Rio: Friday, Sept 24th [Thief]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rio finds out about the locker sweep; Rio pries during tutoring; Rio and his sister have a disagreement; Rio hangs out with Mar and Elena on a Friday night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Underage drinking, drug references; abortion reference; references to underage sexual activity

**Friday, September 24th**

Rio’s falling asleep listening to Mr. Neal drone on about dead white guys when Dylan pokes him in between two of his ribs. 

“What the f—“ he starts to whisper, lifting his head off his arms, agitated. 

“They’re doing a locker sweep,” she murmurs, staring straight ahead. “You good?”

No, Rio is _not_ good. Not only does he have a wad of cash from selling shit for this weekend in his locker, but he also has a baggie of weed that he needs to deliver to Isaiah Aceves last period. 

Rio massages his jaw. “How you know that?”

“Christa just went to the bathroom and saw the cops coming in with the dogs,” Dylan whispers, pushing a note across their shared table to him. 

He quickly scans over Christa’s frankly terrible handwriting detailing the situation. “Fuck.”

“Do you guys have something you’d like to announce to the class?” Mr. Neal asks, tugging on the lapels of his tweed blazer and turning his focus over to them. 

“Yeah,” Rio says loudly. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

If he was lucky, they were starting in one of the other halls. If he was unlucky, well… he doesn’t want to imagine that. It wouldn’t just be the suspension—he’d be hit with a MIP, and he’s pretty sure that might give his mother an aneurysm. 

“With how little you show up, I really think it’s to your benefit that you remain in class,” Mr. Neal snarks, pleased with himself. The comment earns a few snickers from Rio’s classmates, including Misty Rogers, and he rolls his eyes. It’s wild to him that Elizabeth thinks she needs to be jealous of _her_. The gir's retaking 10th grade history as a _senior._ “Now, who can tell me anything about the Columbian Exchange?”

Rio grinds his teeth, considering whether he should just get up and walk out of class. He’ll still end up dragged to Ipson’s office, but at least it won’t be escorted by the cops. 

“Ask if you can go to the bathroom,” Rio hisses to Dylan. He tears off the corner of Christa’s note and scribbles his locker combo down and pushes it towards her. 

“What makes you think he’s gonna let me go after he just told you no?”

“Say you need to change your tampon or somethin’. That always freaks out teachers.”

“And most boys generally,” Dylan mutters. “You guys are such fucking babies.”

At another time, Rio might remind Dylan that she already knows he’s not freaked out by periods or squicked out by blood in pretty much any context—but instead, he just rolls his eyes and asks, “Is this the time?” 

“Fine.” 

Dylan snatches the paper, stuffs it in the pocket of her jeans, and then walks up to Mr. Neal, interrupting him in the middle of his lecture. She puts on a pout and dials up her dramatic side, pretending to be really embarrassed and insisting on whispering in Mr. Neal’s ear, who instantly goes red and nods, gesturing for her to leave the classroom quickly. As soon as he turns around, Dylan sticks her tongue out at Rio and then flounces out the door, her Afro bouncing.

Rio’s jaw is clenched the entire time that Dylan’s gone. He stares at the clock, watching the second hand circle around and around. After five minutes go by, Rio starts to get more agitated. Mr. Neal’s voice is dull gibberish in the background as a knot seems to pull tighter and tighter in his stomach. 

Maybe she was too late. Maybe they’d already swept the locker and they were asking her questions. 

Or maybe she got caught moving the drugs. Maybe they’d already sent her to the principal, and any minute now one of the office secretaries would page for Rio over the intercom. 

Rio’s leg starts bouncing underneath his table. 

_Fuck,_ he thinks. If he gets Dylan suspended... if he gets her a fucking MIP...

Rio scratches down his face. 

He likes Dylan, he does. She’s fun to hang with and joke around with, and god, she’s _really_ fun to fool around with, but... she’s not really all that fun to talk to. When he asks her opinion on things, she usually shrugs. Sometimes she says, “Who cares?” If he pushes her, she’ll just ask him what he thinks and then agree with whatever he says. 

It drives Rio fucking crazy. 

He tried explaining that to Mar once, who looked at Rio like he was straight stupid. But before Elena, Mar had dated a lot of girls that he’d barely tolerated, so he doesn’t really get it. 

Rio doesn’t lie to Dylan. He’s clear on what they are and what he wants, but as much as Dylan insists that she’s fine with them just chilling, Rio senses that she wants more. 

His stomach twists. He can’t get her in trouble. He isn’t ride-or-die for her, so she can’t go down for him. It escalates things, complicates their arrangement—it just wouldn’t be fair. 

Rio shoves back from the table, about to stand up and stride out of the room to find her when Dylan appears at the door, face scrunched and shrugging at him. He watches her walk back to their table, where she plops down and says quietly, “Your locker was clean.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there was, like, nothing in there except for a psych book and a beanie—and that note I dropped in your locker that you _never responded to._ ”

“Did you look in the beanie?” he says through gritted teeth. _God, did she really want to fight about notes_ now _?_

“Yes,” she hisses. “The locker’s fucking empty. I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

“I was just checkin’—”

“Well, maybe you should just check your fucking notes.”

“What are you _talkin’_ about? I didn’t even know it was there.”

“Don’t lie,” Dylan snaps. “It was opened. And it’s not like this is the first time. You _never_ write back.”

Rio groans, running his hand over his cropped hair. 

Mr. Neal clears his throat. “Do I need to separate you two?”

Rio rolls his eyes and shakes his head, surrendering. At this point, he’s banking on Mar having heard about the sweep and saving them both. 

* * *

Rio’s first out of the room as soon as the bell rings. He beelines to his locker, where he finds Mar unloading a math book. 

“Yo, did you hear about the sweep?” Mar asks under his breath, making sure nobody can hear them. 

“Yeah. Did you clear out the stuff?”

“No? Shit, I just heard from Diego, like, a minute ago.”

“What the fuck? Where’d it go, then?” Rio asks, pushing Mar out of the way so he can go through the locker’s contents himself. 

“There’s nothin’ in there, man. I thought you got it.”

“Just—shut the fuck up for a minute, okay?”

Mar shrugs and steps to the side, watching as Rio lifts up the psych book to check underneath, then as he rifles through the book like maybe his drugs and money were somehow accidentally trapped between the pages. Last, Rio reaches into his beanie and even though he already knows it’s empty, he pats around. 

“Find it?” Mar asks stupidly. 

A wild thought crosses Rio’s mind that maybe Dylan stole it and was just pretending that it was never there. He would be somewhat surprised, but it wasn’t impossible. 

But just as he starts wrapping his mind about this idea, he feels something very small and hard inside of his hat. 

Carefully, he pulls it out to inspect it. 

“What’s that?” Mar asks, leaning close to peer at the object. 

Between his thumb and index finger, Rio holds a red plastic jewel. The exact kind of jewel that might be on a [cheap, dinky bracelet](https://di2ponv0v5otw.cloudfront.net/posts/2019/01/11/5c38a596819e907f922d22e5/m_5c38a793409c1546b1c9768e.jpg). The exact kind of bracelet a certain blonde he knows loves to pull at and twist on whenever she’s feeling nervous. 

Rio’s grimace turns into a grin. 

“I don’t get it,” Mar says, brow pinched. “What’s it mean?”

“Elizabeth.”

Mar is not following. “Elizabeth…?”

“ _Elizabeth_ fuckin’ _saved_ me,” Rio says. 

He never could have imagined it. She would be last on the list, every time, if someone asked him who would do something like this for him. 

Rio deposits the jewel into his pocket, then reaches for the topmost note in the pile. It’s from Dylan… and clearly opened. “You didn’t open this, right?”

“Yeah, that was me,” Mar says sarcastically. “I like to take your dumb notes from your fake girlfriend and read them in my spare time.” He adopts a high-pitched, breathy tone, imitating Dylan. “‘‘Ooh, Rio, I love your—’”

Rio scoffs and shoves Mar away from him, who laughs as he stumbles backward. Rio scans over the note that Elizabeth snooped through, shaking his head.

 _Damn, this girl was somethin’_ else _._

But he can’t help but feel victorious. 

She was _jealous_. 

* * *

After school, Mar forgets, for the fifth day in a row, that Rio’s staying after school to tutor Elizabeth. 

“You gotta do it _every_ day, man? That’s fuckin’ way worse than detention. You got a shitty deal.”

Rio doesn’t say anything. Stewart has never said how often Rio needed to tutor Elizabeth. It was just that at the end of every session when he was dropping her off in front of her Barbie Dream House, Rio somehow ended up suggesting the very next day as their next meeting. 

It was dumb as fuck, because the idea was that Rio wasn’t supposed to be putting that much effort into getting into her pants, but there was something about riling her up that was just _fun._ And as annoyed as Elizabeth got with him, she never reached a breaking point. Sometimes he could even get her to laugh, and fuck, he really had to work for it—but that kinda made it more entertaining.

“It ain’t that bad,” Rio says casually. 

“Yeah? You get to first base yet?”

“Don’t be gross,” Elena says, appearing at Mar’s shoulder. 

“I’m just sayin’,” Mar grumbles. “I thought we were all gonna kick it tonight.”

“We are,” Rio says. “Just after I’m done.”

“Why don’t you bring her?” Elena suggests. 

Rio juts out his bottom lip. “Nah.” 

He doesn’t know why he’s against it, exactly—besides the fact that he’s pretty sure Elizabeth would never accept the invitation anyway. 

“Why not?” Elena demands. “Are you embarrassed of us?”

“A li’l, yeah,” Rio teases, pulling his beanie on over his head.

“Why?” Elena pouts.

“Because you’re embarrassin’.”

“Oh, you _wish_ you were us,” Mar says, and then he plants a kiss on Elena’s scowl.

“You must really like her,” Elena says the moments her lips are free. “To get embarrassed by us.”

“You’re trippin’.”

Elena was always on the hunt for a girlfriend for Rio. She wanted them to do dumb stuff like go on double dates to the movies or mini-golf. She wanted another girl around for when the boys were being, as she put it, “pigs.” 

But that wasn’t what this was. 

He wasn’t denying that Elizabeth was hot, or that he had fun with her, or that he’d thought about her alone in his room late at night. But his interest in her was surface-level, temporary—like it was with Dylan, like it had been with Kelsey, Maria, Alice. 

She wasn’t _special._

Sure, he felt giddy with anticipation at the thought of seeing her right now, of hearing her tell him about how she pulled this off—not only discovering that the sweep was happening in time, but piecing together that he’d need her help, getting her hands on his locker combo and breaking in—but that didn’t _mean_ anything. 

If he never saw Elizabeth again, he’d forget about her in three days. 

Rio waves off Mar and Elena and then walks away towards the library.

When he opens the door, he sees Elizabeth sitting at the same table they always study at. It’s the third time he’s seen her that day, but still, he finds it hard to look away from her. Her hair’s curled, she’s got on some shiny lip gloss that he couldn’t stop thinking about all through math class, and her pale legs are visible under a jean skirt he'd like to get his hands under. 

“Yo,” he says to her, tossing his backpack onto the table. He’s got a grin a mile wide. 

Elizabeth looks up at him, impassive. “Hi.”

Rio waits for her to say something, waits for her to pull his drugs and his money out of her pocket and present it to him like a present. 

She doesn’t. 

“Crazy day, huh?” he tries prodding. 

Elizabeth looks at him blankly. “Why? What happened?”

Rio cocks his head at her, surprised. He sort of expected her to want to spill the whole story immediately, to rub it in his face that she had to save his ass.

“The locker sweep,” he says slowly.

“Oh. Yeah. I don’t really have to worry about those,” Elizabeth says, shrugging. She avoids looking at him. “You’re not dumb enough to bring your—” she drops her voice to a whisper, looks up at him, judging, “— _drugs_ onto school property, are you?”

Rio scoffs. “‘Scuse me?”

“Sorry,” she says, doing a good job of pretending to be sheepish. “I just thought you’d be smarter than that.”

Rio stares hard at her, mouth agape.

“Are you going to sit down?” Elizabeth asks politely.

 _She’s really gonna pretend she didn’t have anythin’ to do with this?_ Rio thinks to himself, incredulous. _What the fuck?_

Rio sinks into the chair as Elizabeth opens her math book and starts writing her name at the top of her homework sheet. She writes really slowly, focused on making the curls and loops just right. Apparently she can feel his eyes boring into her, though, because she looks up and says, _“What?”_

He’s finding it hard to wrap his head around this. Elizabeth doesn’t smoke, so it didn’t make sense for her to steal his weed. Why is she acting like she didn’t take his drugs and his—?

His _money._

Did Elizabeth _steal_ his _money?_

Rio blinks at her. Why would Elizabeth Marks, the princess who lives in the Barbie Dream House, _steal money from him?_ Was Daddy’s credit card allowance not enough?

“Are you okay?” Elizabeth asks, voice thick as honey. 

Realizing his jaw was hanging open, Rio closes his mouth.

Rio considers calling her out. He considers ripping open her backpack right there. He considers demanding to see her bracelet, and then pulling the jewel out of his pocket and presenting it to her silently, waiting for her to break and confess—but he doesn’t need to. It’s right in front of him, and he can see the missing piece, and he _knows_ that she did it—and she’s sitting there, poised and proper, acting like nothing has happened.

She's straight nuts, and Rio finds himself caught between being intrigued, impressed, pissed off, and _excited._

He runs his tongue along his teeth, tamping down a smirk.

If she wants to play that game, he’ll play that game.

At first, he lets the silence stretch between them, the only sounds the murmurs of the one other pair still in the library a few tables away and the scratching of Elizabeth’s pencil on the page as she copies down the first math problem. It takes her awhile, as she keeps glancing over at Rio.

He knows she’s wondering why he isn’t distracting her like usual, asking her questions and fighting with her about her opinion on _Jurassic Park_ or the merits of grunge rock, so he just taps his fingers on the desk, saying nothing, watching her try not to squirm.

When she can’t stand the quiet any longer, she says, “So. Um. Can you help me with the difference of squares formula?”

“Doin’ anythin’ fun tonight?” he asks her instead, aimlessly running his fingers along the pages of her math book. He’ll start slow, he figures, and ramp-up to get her to break. Elizabeth eyes him suspiciously, like she can’t tell if he’s about to invite her to something or if he’s just trying to fuck with her. She hesitates so long that Rio says in a monotone, “It ain’t a trick question, darlin’.” 

“I know,” she says defensively. 

“So. Are you?” 

“I don’t know. No. It’s just a regular Friday night, I guess.” Elizabeth doesn’t look at him, and she starts doodling a yin yang symbol in the margin of her paper. 

“And what’s that mean? Makin’ out with your boyfriend on the couch?”

Elizabeth’s cheeks burn red. “No.”

“Somewhere else, then? His car?” He pauses. “Your bed?” 

“Dean has a football game,” Elizabeth explains quickly, her face steadily getting brighter. “I won’t even see him tonight.”

Rio raises a brow. “He don’t come over afterward, all sweaty and worked up?” 

He wonders how far Elizabeth has gone. He’s pretty sure it isn’t very far at all—but then again, she’s been good at surprising him. 

Elizabeth’s face scrunches. “Ew.” 

Rio chuckles. “That’s a funny reaction to imaginin’ gettin’ hot and bothered with your boyfriend. You sure you like him?”

Elizabeth glowers at him. “Don’t be stupid. Of course I do.”

“Yeah?” 

Beth stutters over her words, at a loss for what to say. “Wh—what do you even _mean?_ We’re dating. Obviously I like him.”

Rio shrugs, then says noncommittally, “A’ight.”

Elizabeth narrows her eyes at him, defensive. “Why are you so interested in me and Dean, anyway?”

“Who says I am?”

“You’re always asking me questions about him,” Elizabeth counters, frustration edging into her voice. She snaps her bracelet against her wrist. “What we talk about, what we do when we hang out. Like you can’t believe we’re together or something.”

It’s true. Rio had asked her those questions over the last couple days, mostly because he was stumped about her interest in Dean. In class, he was dumb as a brick. He had an excuse for everything and never owned up to anything. His one interest seemed to be football, and Rio had sussed out pretty early that Elizabeth knew jack shit about the sport. 

Rio doesn’t look at her, just keeps flipping back and forth through the pages of her textbook. “Maybe I can’t.”

Elizabeth flinches, like she wasn’t expecting him to be so honest. “Well, we are. So.” 

“Why?”

“Why what?” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Rio sees her twisting the bracelet back and forth. _Good_ , he thinks. He’s riling her up now.

“Why you together?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

“Is it?” Rio challenges. “Should be easy to answer, then.”

“He’s funny. He’s _nice_.” She emphasizes this last word as if to make a point. 

Rio’s mouth twists into a sarcastic pout. “You sayin’ I’m not nice?”

Elizabeth recrosses her legs, irritated. “You could be nicer.”

“What, like compliment you and shit? Tell you you look good in that skirt?” Rio lets his eyes drag up and down her body, and he sees the blush on her face spread down, down, down. 

Elizabeth twists the bracelet faster, and she purses her lips, like she’s caught between feeling frustrated and flattered. She doesn’t say anything. 

“He get you this?” Rio asks, reaching over, lightly grabbing her wrist, and running his thumb along the bracelet. “That one of the nice things he do for you?”

Elizabeth swallows and nods silently. Her wrist feels small and delicate in his hand, and her skin is warm and soft in his grip. 

“Looks cheap.” He taps his nail against the prongs that used to hold the jewel which is currently sitting in his pocket. “How long it last before it broke?”

Elizabeth’s eyes dart down to the bracelet like this is the first time that she’s noticed it’s broken, and she yanks her hand back from his. She looks over at him, brow furrowed, like she’s trying to figure out if he knows something. 

Rio just stares at her. His face is smooth, unbothered, but he doesn’t look away. Instead of squirming, Elizabeth does that thing she sometimes does and doubles down, pushing her shoulders back and sitting up taller. 

“The difference of squares formula,” she says, clearing her throat and pushing her notebook over to him. “Will you show me?”

Rio _tsks_. “Rude. And you think _I’m_ not nice?”

“What? What did I do?” Elizabeth asks, flustered. He can read her like a book. He can tell she’s worried he knows about the locker. That he might confront her about it. But there’s no fun in it that way. 

“I asked you what you doin’ tonight.”

“So?”

“So, the _polite_ thing to do would be to ask me what _I’m_ doin’.” 

“Oh,” Elizabeth says, exhaling a sigh of relief. “What are you doing tonight?”

“I might chill with someone,” Rio says vaguely, purposefully using the exact same word that was in Dylan’s note. 

Elizabeth’s eyes widen just briefly, and he knows she knows what he’s doing. She tries very hard to sound nonchalant when she picks up her pencil to start doodling on her paper again and says, “Oh. Nice.”

“Yeah.”

Clearing her throat, Elizabeth says coolly, “Awesome. Well. Have fun.”

“Oh, I plan to,” Rio says, voice light. 

Elizabeth’s pressure on her pencil gets a little firmer and she just nods, seemingly unable to come up with anything to say. 

Rio may not have gotten a confession out of her, but it doesn’t matter. He knows he’s won anyway.

* * *

When Rio flings open the front door to his house an hour later, nobody seems to be home at first. As he walks deeper into the house, he finds his older sister Vanessa in the kitchen making quesadillas, rice, and beans. She’s already halfway dressed in her McDonald’s uniform, stained black slacks and a black undershirt, so that as soon as one of their parents walks through the door, she can just grab her shirt and nametag and go. 

“Where have you been?” Vanessa asks. She’s not much older than Rio, only 18, but she graduated in June, and between that and her role as the primary babysitter of his little sisters, she bosses him around like she’s his mother, too. “I saw Martín and Elena chillin’ on his front porch when I got home from work, but they said you were ‘busy.’”

“I was tutoring,” Rio says, squeezing by Vanessa to open the fridge and pull out a can of off-brand Coke.

“You? Tutoring?” she asks skeptically, looking over her shoulder at him as she flips the tortilla in the pan. 

“Yeah.”

“You need to come up with better mentiras, tonto,” Vanessa says, rolling her eyes. “Amá will never buy that.”

“Well, it’s the truth.” Rio snaps open the soda and takes a long drink. “I been tutoring a girl every day after school this week for, like, an hour. She’s real bad at math.”

“She’s real bad at pickin’ tutors, too,” Vanessa says. “I’m surprised you even show up. School left a message on the machine _again_ to say that you’ve missed more than half your classes this week.”

There’s a pregnant pause and then Rio asks quietly, “You erase the message?”

Vanessa sighs, pulling down an old plate from the cupboard. “Yeah, I did.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re not welcome.” Vanessa tosses the quesadilla on the plate and then sets it on the table, where Rio sits down. “That’s not for you. You can make your own food.”

“I ain’t touchin’ it.” Rio puts his hands up in surrender.

“Look, I can’t keep covering for you,” Vanessa says, running her hands over her temples and through her hair. She pauses, like the next part is harder for her to say. “I appreciate what you did for me—more than I could ever say. But... I didn’t think you’d get so wrapped up in all this that you’d start throwin’ your whole life away.” She looks up at him and she looks lost, anxious.

Rio looks away from her and clicks his tongue against his teeth. 

Last winter, Vanessa had gotten knocked up. The father had split immediately, denying ever even knowing her at all. Even if they’d been able to afford it, Rio’s parents—devout Catholics—would’ve never understood. They would have never let her. If they’d known, she would have had two choices: out on the street or raising up another baby in this house that was too small and too cramped and too loud. 

Rio had gotten her the money quickly by getting himself wrapped up with Carlos and his gang. Carlos was twenty-something and lived a few doors down, in some rundown house with his girlfriend and a couple of his boys. Rio didn’t like him, but he had bought weed off him enough to know that Carlos knew how to get cash fast. Carlos hooked Rio up with the product, and Rio became the mediator between Carlos and all the rich white kids from school that wanted to party every weekend.

Paying for the abortion had been easy, just a couple of weeks' work. Rio had sat in the Planned Parenthood office with his sister as she disappeared behind some doors, pale from head to toe. When she came back out, she looked relieved. She looked like herself again. And she thought they could just move on, go back to normal.

But Rio had already been bored in school. Bored of the assignments, bored of the teachers, bored of the kids. And doing things for Carlos wasn’t boring, even if Rio mostly hated the guy. Carlos had even hinted that if Rio kept doing what he was doing, he could get cut into the bigger stuff when he was older, harder, more experienced. 

“What you’re doin’ now is nothin,’” Carlos had said as Rio weighed dime bags one evening, his eyes golden with promise. Carlos laughed, smoke hazy and thick around his face. “You think this money is good? Oh, no tienes nunca idea.” 

But Rio wasn’t the only one with no idea—Vanessa had no clue what she was talking about.

“It ain’t ruinin’ my life,” Rio says roughly. It was the opposite. Running with Carlos was opening his life _up_. It was making it so someday he could help Vanessa pay for beauty school, so one day his mom could stop working on her hands and knees scrubbing white people’s floors, so his dad could get his own auto shop and stop working for jackasses. And so Rio could escape a life he never wanted in the first place. “It’s gonna make everything better, you’ll see.”

“Chris, you’re not that naive,” Vanessa says softly, back turned to him as she puts the second quesadilla in the pan. “You’re blinded, and your priorities are all out of whack, and—“

Rio shakes his head. “Just fuckin’ stop, V. You don’t know nothin’ about my ‘priorities.’”

“Well, I know you don’t give a shit about the people that care about you!” In her anger, Vanessa whacks the tortilla with her spatula. 

Rio glowers at the back of her head. “That’s what you think?”

Vanessa sighs, then begrudgingly admits to the wall, “No. it’s just—I need to know you’re gonna be okay.”

Rio eyes her suspiciously. “Why? You goin’ somewhere?”

“No, but every time _you_ do I sit at here anxious and worried that something bad is gonna to happen to you. That you’re gonna get caught and arrested—god, or something worse!” Her voice cracks on the last words. “And it’s gonna be my fault, because I got you into this mess and I keep coverin’ your ass.”

Rio runs his tongue out over his lip. Today had been a close call with the MIP, and he doesn’t want her to see that on his face.

“I can take care of myself.” He says it earnestly, like he wants her to believe him. 

Vanessa shakes her head. “Amá y Apá lost their _minds_ last semester when your grades plummeted. You know this semester is gonna be worse, right?” She glances at him, then stirs the beans. 

“It’s gonna be fine. I’m passin’ all my classes, ‘cept Physics, but all I gotta do is make up the test and I’m good.”

“Yeah, sure. _You're_ gonna be fine. And _they’re_ gonna beat themselves up about being out of the house before you wake up and comin’ home late worn out and exhausted, thinkin’ they could be doin’ more to help you when you’re just off doing whatever you want, whenever you want.” Vanessa looks over her shoulder at him, and her eyes are tired. 

Rio has nothing to say to that, nothing he can deny, nothing he can promise to make either of them feel better. 

Rio clicks his tongue against his teeth. His agitation suddenly gets the better of him and he finds himself surging upward and out of the chair, unable to sit still for one second longer. Between this conversation and the locker sweep and arguing with Dylan about notes and getting robbed by some pretty-in-pink _princess,_ Rio just wants to get drunk with Mar and forget about this fucking day. 

“¿Adonde vas?” Vanessa asks sharply. 

“Out,” Rio says shortly. Vanessa looks at him like he’s slapped her, and he softens instantly, regretful. “I’m just goin’ next door. I’ll be there the whole night. You ain’t gotta worry.”

She looks at him like that’s not true. He squeezes her arm just before he turns on his heel, knowing there’s nothing he can do about that, either. 

* * *

The booze has hit him and Rio’s feeling good, stretched out on a dumpy old couch in Mar’s basement. Mar sits on the floor, his head leaned back in Elena’s lap as she’s curled up in the recliner, running her nails through Mar’s long hair. 

They’re not doing much, just bullshitting and talking smack about their classmates, when Rio brings up Dean again. 

“Boland’s such a dumbass. You know he failed Algebra II and he’s retakin’ it as a senior?”

“So you’ve mentioned,” Elena hums. 

“I’m still in Geometry,” Mar grumbles. “If I’m lucky I’ll be taking Algebra II for the _first_ time as a senior.”

“‘S different,” Rio promises him, waving off Mar’s concern with a flick of his wrist. Elena makes a noise in her throat and Rio lifts his head up to look at her. “What?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at _all_.”

“ _What_?” Rio asks again, more insistent. 

“I’m not doing this,” Elena says, rolling her eyes. “If you want to pretend to be an idiot—“

“I’m not pretendin’ anythin’,” Rio argues louder than he intends. Elena’s eyebrows shoot up and he says, more quietly, “I just mean I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Elena says under her breath. 

“Mar, what’s she goin’ on about?” 

Mar jerks his head up. “Huh? I wasn’t listening.”

“Jesus Christ.” Rio laughs too easily. “Make Elena tell me what the fuck she’s goin’ on about.”

“Tell him,” Mar prods, reaching behind him to poke her. “You know he won’t drop it. He never drops anything.”

Elena groans, knowing Mar is right. “Well, okay, _one—_ ” she says, counting off on her fingers, “—you’re pretending you’ve forgotten his first name, when you’ve already mentioned him twice. Two, since when do you care how dumb people are when you’re overcharging them for product? Three, it’s so obvious what this is really about but—“

“What’s it really about?” Rio demands, propping himself up on his elbows. 

Before Elena can get in another word, Mar’s brother Guillermo appears at the top of the basement stairs with his hand over the mouthpiece of the cordless phone. “Rio, man, she’s callin’ again. My mom’s gettin’ pissed.” Guillermo takes the steps down into the basement two at a time and hands the phone over to Rio, who takes it with a sigh.

Guillermo shakes his head, bemused, before disappearing back up the stairs. Mar and Elena watch Rio with interest.

“‘Lo?”

“Where have you _been?_ ” Dylan demands. This is the third time she’s called Mar’s house, so he can only imagine the number of times she’s called his own. He grimaces, thinking about his mother trying to pry about her later. 

“I dunno. Out,” Rio lies, playing with a loose string on his hoodie sleeve as he flops back down onto the couch so that he’s staring up at the ceiling. He’s actually been in the basement the whole time, but just hasn’t been feeling like talking to her. He finds that he’s inexplicably annoyed with her, although she hasn’t done anything that she hasn’t done before. 

Dylan makes a strangled noise of frustration. “I thought you were gonna come over tonight. You know... Since my parents aren’t home…”

Rio hums, like he’s considering it. As tempting as it is, he can’t be bothered.

“I’m not really good to drive,” he says finally. 

Dylan sucks in a breath. “Well, is Elena there?”

“Yeah.”

“Can she drive you? I thought you said she never drinks with you guys.”

“She doesn’t,” Rio says, glancing at Elena, who’s peering at him curiously. “Usually, I mean. She had a li’l tonight.”

Elena furrows her brow and Rio slashes his finger across his throat, warning her to keep quiet.

Dylan’s voice becomes softer, more timid, like she’s realizing something. “Oh.”

“Yeah…” Rio feels a pinch of guilt eating at him, and he finds himself saying in a rush, “But maybe we could kick it tomorrow or somethin’.”

“Yeah?” Dylan brightens.

“Yeah, I mean, I gotta see. I gotta work some, but we could probably chill.” He wants to mean it.

“Okay,” Dylan says. “You’ll call me?”

Rio agrees and then hangs up the phone, tossing it to the end of the couch near his feet. He groans and runs his hands over his close-cropped hair. 

“Well. Point proven,” Elena says.

“What?”

“You. Skipping out on hooking up with a girl.”

“That don’t mean nothin’. I’m just havin’ fun here.”

Mar snickers. “Yeah, ‘cause _this_ is more fun than getting into Dylan’s pants.” 

Rio bristles. “I didn’t say that.”

“Then why don’t you wanna go?”

“I dunno. Just don’t.” He figures it must be because of the MIP scare—because thinking he’d gotten her in trouble had escalated things, had made him wary of their arrangement. 

“Oh, come on!” Elena huffs exasperatedly. “You like Beth Marks. Just _admit it_ already _._ ”

“Do you not remember the part where she fuckin’ _robbed_ me earlier today?” Rio demands, face souring. “And then she lied about it to my face?”

“I remember the part where you told that story for, like, twenty minutes—obsessing over every little detail of it.”

“Yeah, I remember that too,” Mar chimes in earnestly, like it didn’t just happen an hour ago. Elena laughs and leans over to press a kiss to his hair. “‘She just fuckin’ _sat there_ , like she had no idea what I was talkin’ about!’” Mar quotes Rio, laughing. “You said that like ten times, man.” He leans his head back to look up at Elena. “He’s a goner, huh?”

“Totally,” Elena agrees. 

“Shut up. She ain’t nothin’ to me.”

“Well, _I_ support it completely,” Elena says, ignoring Rio entirely. “You finally like a smart girl.”

“‘Scuse me?”

“You always go for these airheads, and you’re bored of them in like a month. If she can _rob_ you? I like her for you already.”

Rio scowls.

But he stares at the ceiling and can’t help feeling like Monday is very far away.


	4. Beth: Saturday, Sept 25th-Monday, Sept 27th [Cookies]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Ruby go shopping; Rio has to cancel tutoring; Dean makes a declaration.

**Saturday, September 25th**

Peeking into Annie's room, Beth confirms that the five-year-old is down for her nap. It's easy to tell when she's asleep: her entire body flops out over the mattress, arms and legs flailing about in a wild mess of limbs. Even in sleep, Annie is anything but peaceful. She's definitely out cold, though. Beth can hear her tiny, even breaths.

Beth shuts Annie's door with a soft click and then turns to her right to open the door to the master bedroom, where she can hear the much noisier, much less soothing sound of her mother snoring. She's maybe drunk, or hungover, or both—Beth isn't really sure. She didn't even see her mother come out of her room yesterday after Rio dropped her off, but that doesn't mean she didn't sneak out in the middle of the night and walk the half-block to the liquor store. It wouldn't be the first time she's used some of the dwindling supply of money to buy a bottle of gin instead of a bag of groceries. 

Tiptoeing into the room, Beth is careful to avoid stepping on the spot under the carpet that she knows creaks. Debbie's purse lies half-spilled next to her mattress, which sits on the floor since she sold her bed frame as a scrambled last-ditch effort to try and cover the mortgage in the old house. She finally gave up, but not before she'd sold most of their nicer furniture and destroyed their credit.

Beth rifles through the contents of the purse until she finds the car keys, and then she sneaks out of the room, exhaling in relief. 

Beth's not actually sure how Debbie would react to her stealing the car—whether she wouldn't bat an eyelash or whether she would yell and scream in a belligerent rage. So far, Beth hasn't been caught, and Debbie hasn't asked any questions about how cans of food appear in the cupboards beside the meager supply she bothers to stock when she gets her welfare check. 

Beth slips the keys into her own purse, and then pads into her room and opens her jewelry box. It's maybe the nicest thing she owns anymore—a present from her father she can't seem to part with, despite the fact that every time she looks at it, her heart lodges itself in her throat. 

Her room is otherwise relatively barren: a plain pink comforter lies perfectly made on her bed, three pairs of refurbished shoes are neatly lined up by the door, a shabby desk sits tucked in the corner with two library books stacked on top, and there are some magazine cutouts tacked to her wall with her celebrity crushes (Mario Lopez from _Saved by the Bell_ and Will Friedle from _Boy Meets World_ , to name a few). 

There's usually nothing special in the jewelry box besides some cheap plastic trinkets she lets Annie use to play dress-up. Her mother had pawned the ring she'd inherited from her Nana at her bat mitzvah ages ago—it had been one of the first things to go, despite the tears Beth had cried over it—but she keeps the bracelet Dean got for her in there when he's not around to wonder why she's not wearing it. 

It's sitting there now, one bead missing, but it's not the most important thing in there for once. Tucked underneath the removable tray is the money Beth stole from Rio—nearly a hundred and fifty dollars. 

Beth hadn't even known what she had taken until she'd snuck into the bathroom during seventh period, unfurling the wad of papers she'd hastily stuffed in her back pocket as soon as Dean's friend Kyle had rounded the corner. Luckily, he was sort of an idiot, and even though he'd been by Beth's locker on more than one occasion, he hadn't even seemed to notice that she was nowhere near hers. 

Beth had been planning to hand everything over to Rio at the end of the day; she'd even been sort of excited by the idea. She was sure she would surprise him, that maybe he'd even be a little impressed with her. She'd blushed just thinking about it as she'd finished patching a hole in one of Annie's pairs of jeans on the sewing machine in Home Ec.

But then when she'd counted up the money, Beth had faltered. She was frozen to the spot, just staring at the cash. She'd never had that much money in her life. The feel of it in her hands was intoxicating as her mind reeled, thinking of everything she could buy with it.

 _This is enough for groceries,_ she'd thought. _Good groceries. Like stuff not-in-a-can._

She sat in the bathroom stall daydreaming about all the meals she could make. Potato pancakes. Enchiladas. Chicken and dumplings. 

She thought about how maybe she could get Annie a warm coat at the secondhand store, and maybe even a pair of shoes. She thought about how she could make sure that Annie went to school every day on a full stomach. How, if she were scrupulous, Beth could eat lunch every day for the next month, too.

As much as she wanted to shock Rio—and god, as much as she didn't want to steal from him—she just couldn't imagine giving up that money when it was already in her pocket.

It was too easy. All she had to do was nothing.

The hard part was over. 

Well. That's what she had thought, at least.

She'd suspected that Rio might be on to her at tutoring, what with the way he'd asked her about the locker sweep. But she'd been sure there was no way for him to piece it together, no way for him to realize that she had done anything.

But then, after asking her a hundred questions about Dean—which she's still trying to wrap her brain around—Rio had grabbed her wrist. He'd started touching her bracelet, his fingers accidentally gliding over her skin at the same time.

Her heartbeat had thundered in her chest. She'd been sure that he was going to say something when he'd rubbed his thumb over the missing jewel and pointed it out.

She hadn't even noticed that it had broken, and it was possible that it could've happened before (or after) the theft. Still, she had instantly thought of the way her bracelet had snagged in the hat, and she felt like she was caught red-handed.

But Rio hadn't said anything. He'd just... dropped it. 

Then he told her about his plans for the evening (which was just further proof that whatever daydreams she'd had about kissing him were just absurd. Not only was he a bona fide drug dealer, but she was also absolutely intimidated by his experience with girls).

But the topic change proved that Rio didn't think she had anything to do with his missing drugs and money. Beth feels confident that she knows Rio well enough to know that he wasn't one to shy away from conflict. 

_He would confront her, if he knew,_ she rationalized. S _o if he didn't, that means he doesn't suspect her._

She had wondered, though, if Rio was trying to make her jealous, talking about his plans with that other, nameless girl. 

Not that it mattered, she thinks now, grabbing her bracelet and slipping it on. She has Dean. And despite all the ways that Rio was trying to make her doubt her relationship, she is happy. Perfectly happy.

* * *

"You really think you'd be better at this by now," Ruby says when Beth careens into Ruby's garbage cans outside of her house. "Get out."

Beth nods, stops grinding her teeth, and rubs her jaw as she steps out of the driver's side to let Ruby take over. "Thanks for coming with me."

"I'm just happy to hear you get to buy some groceries. Where'd your mom get the money?" Ruby clicks the seatbelt in and reverses the car smoothly.

"Um," Beth says, chewing on her cheek. "My Nana loaned her some."

 _As if,_ Beth thinks to herself.

Her Nana hated Debbie and always had. Most likely, she supported Beth's dad deserting her—though Beth was uncertain how she might feel about him also abandoning his own kids.

Then again, it was likely her father had spun his own tale to his mother. When Nana called once a month from Kalamazoo like clockwork, she always asked icily when was the last time Beth had gotten to spend some time with her father. It was like she thought Debbie was harboring the kids away from him or something. Beth thought about telling her Nana what was really going on, but had found it too hard to say the words. 

"Well, good," Ruby says definitively. "Family is supposed to look out for each other. I'm surprised it took her this long."

Beth bites her lip. As much as Ruby tries to, she just really doesn't get it. Beth's spent a lot of time wishing that she had Ruby's family—her mom and dad and her brothers are all so close. They were the kind of family that sat down to eat every meal together, the kind of family that all crowded into the gymnasium to watch Ruby's terrible band performances together, the kind of family that loved each other through thick and thin—always.

The type of family Beth had never had, even when things were better.

"Yeah, well. You know that isn't exactly a Marks strong suit," Beth mumbles, thinking of how long it's been since she's even heard from her father. She's probably heard from her Nana more recently. 

"Except for you," Ruby says, glancing over at Beth. "You're always looking out for Annie."

"Yeah, but that doesn't count," Beth counters. "If I didn't, nobody would."

"Yet somehow, your parents don't seem to think about that for you…" 

Beth grimaces. Ruby's right, but the comment stings. "I can take care of myself."

"But you shouldn't have to," Ruby pushes. "B, I really think it's time to tell someone what's going on. If your Nana didn't loan you this money, how many days were you going to go without breakfast? Without lunch? At the very least, we should tell my mom—"

"You know, Stan came into my office during TA yesterday. He said your clarinet solo would knock a man's socks right off," Beth interrupts. "And he smiled like, _this_ big when I said you talk about him a lot."

Ruby whips her head over to Beth, jaw dropped. "You told him what?!"

"Stop sign!" Beth squeaks, pointing at the corner of the road. 

Ruby slams on the breaks, swinging her arm out to stop Beth from jerking forward. "Girl, you are lucky I love you. I should have just let you fly through that windshield."

"But then who would tell you about how Stan loves your terrible clarinet playing skills?"

"Hate you," Ruby mutters darkly.

"Hate your face," Beth responds.

Ruby smiles, and then she's quiet for a minute. Finally, trying and failing to bite back a grin, she asks softly, "Did he really say all that?"

"Yes! I _told_ you he liked you."

"Or… he could just really like wind instruments?" 

"Ruby," Beth scolds. 

"What?"

"That is the dumbest thing you've ever said out loud. And I have heard you say that Eric Matthews isn't cute."

"Girl, that skinny white boy with the floppy hair? Please."

Ruby laughs, and then they're cracking up until Ruby's favorite Salt-N-Pepa song comes on. Then they embarrass themselves (well, Beth more than Ruby) rapping along the entire rest of the drive to the grocery store. 

* * *

Beth crosses flour off her grocery list and adds up its cost to her tally: she's at $103.89. That means she should be able to get the coat. 

The cart is full, and Ruby gazes at the bags of chocolate chips on the other side of the aisle.

"You know, Stan told me he doesn't like cookies," Ruby says. 

"Like chocolate chip cookies?" 

"No, like… any cookies. He said he loves cake and brownies and pies, but cookies are 'meh.'"

Beth scrunches her eyebrows up. "I don't think you can like him anymore."

Ruby laughs.

"I should make him some. Convert him," Beth suggests, crossing the aisle and running her hand over the bag of chocolate chips. "Because I just can't give my approval if he's anti-cookie. That's where I draw the line."

"Really? That's your line?" Ruby says, voice flat with disbelief. There's a tone shift, and Beth drops the bag, looking quizzically over her shoulder at Ruby. "I'm just saying—if I got to draw the line for _you_ , it would be 'flirts openly with Misty Rogers in front of you.'"

Beth feels flames lick at her face, a fiery combination of mortification and anger warring in her belly. It was bad enough that Dean had been so blatant about it that her friends were catching on, but it felt worse to have Ruby throwing it in her face. It feels like a slap against her cheek. 

"That was mean," Beth says quietly. 

Ruby looks abashed and drops her head to study her toes. "I'm sorry."

"I'm tired of everyone always, like, insulting my boyfriend." Beth picks the bag of chocolate chips up, just to have something to do with her hands. She pretends to read the nutritional facts. 

"Everyone? Who is everyone?"

"You know. Just people.” There’s a pause and Beth can tell Ruby is waiting for elaboration. “You. Rio—"

"That drughead that's tutoring you?" Ruby interrupts, confusion etched on her face. "He's insulting Dean? Why?"

"He's not a 'drughead,'" Beth says defensively. Sure, Rio sells drugs, and she's not naive—she knows he probably does them, too—but still. "That's, like, so reductive."

Ruby stares at Beth in a way that makes Beth fidget. 

"But what does he have to say about Dean?" Ruby asks again. "How does he even know him? He's never even here."

"I don't know. He just, like… is all weird about him. Like, he asks what me and Dean do together or what we talk about. Like he thinks it's weird we're together or something."

Ruby won't look away, and Beth can feel her cheeks turning red again.

"Does Rio like you?"

"No," Beth says quickly. "He just likes to drive me crazy."

"Right," Ruby says slowly. "Because that's never been a sign that a boy likes you—when he teases you and insults the guy you're dating."

"Rio does _not_ like me," Beth insists. She picks up another bag of chocolate chips, as if to compare them. 

"Why do you say that like that?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Like it's crazy that anybody besides Dean would ever like you."

Beth scrunches her eyes shut briefly. "I didn't mean it like that," Beth says, but she can feel her stomach twisting. "I just meant, you know, I'm not his type. Or whatever. I'm like a goodie-two-shoes nerd and he's…"

“A drughead?” Ruby suggests.

“No. I don't know. He’s… _him_.” 

Ruby doesn't say anything for a minute, and Beth chances to look at her. Ruby's looking at Beth thoughtfully. "Do you… want to be his type?"

"What? No." 

"I'm not judging," Ruby says immediately. "It's okay if you like someone else, you know. That happens. It's normal, even. People don't stay with their first boyfriends forever."

"I do _not_ like Rio. Even if Dean were out of the picture, I would not like Rio."

Ruby sighs in relief. "Good. Because that guy is trouble. And that's where I draw _my_ line."

Beth nods, silent. 

"So…" Ruby says awkwardly. She gestures toward the cart. "All done?" 

"Yeah," Beth says, turning back to face Ruby with a smile plastered on her face. She tosses one of the bags of chocolate chips in the basket, returning the other to the shelf. "But I'm gonna make the cookies. It'll give you an excuse to talk to Stan."

Ruby beams. 

* * *

**Monday, September 27th**

Beth is careful to avoid letting Ruby peek into her backpack as she digs out the ziplock baggie with the batch of cookies she made for Stan. She doesn't want Ruby to see the second bag, the one she made for Rio. 

She hadn't been planning it, and she's even second-guessing herself right now as she sits on the bus, thinking Rio might think it's strange for her to do that for him, it's just—she'd spent all of yesterday feeling so _guilty_. 

Beth had decided to take Annie to the park for a picnic, savoring one of the last warm days left of the year. It had been fine—fun, even—until a little boy came up to Beth, interrupting her from reading her English homework. He was teary-eyed and accusatory, reporting that Annie had stolen one of his Hot Wheels. Annie denied it vehemently, face red and blotchy with indignation, and Beth had been tempted to believe her. But the boy had been so distraught, Beth would have felt remiss if she didn't do her due diligence. 

"Let's just check your pockets," she had said soothingly to Annie. "Maybe you took it by accident?"

But then Annie had gotten fussy and defensive, refusing to let Beth near her, and Beth had known that Annie's earlier ire had all been a ruse. She'd practically had to wrestle Annie to the ground to get her to give up the toy car, and Annie had screamed, "Stranger danger! Stranger danger!" the whole time. Concerned eyes had darted to them, and the whole thing had been absolutely mortifying. 

Blushing furiously and feeling like the biggest hypocrite in the world, Beth lectured Annie the entire walk home about how bad it was to steal from others and lie. 

Her words had haunted her in the middle of the night until she'd finally just gotten up and baked another batch to relieve her stress. Then, in her 3 am remorseful haze, she'd decided she would gift them to Rio as a sort of secret apology. 

* * *

For some reason, Beth looks for Rio in English class, although he's never there, and she's disappointed but not surprised to find his seat empty for the duration of the period. 

She's startled to find him in math, however, since there can't be a quiz—they just had one on Friday. 

Beth stares at the back of his head from the doorway. She thinks of going over to him, of giving him the cookies, but she hesitates. She's nervous, and not just because of all these people around—what if he really does think it's weird that she baked for him? It's not like she can just say, "I only did it because I'm sorry I robbed you."

Paralyzed by indecision, Beth stands rooted to her spot—until Dean barrels into her from the hallway, swiping her hair aside to kiss her on the neck. 

"You know the rules on PDA, Mr. Boland," Mr. Stewart reprimands from the front of the room, barely glancing up at them. 

Hearing these words, however, Rio turns around to look. He likely catches the tail end of Dean's lips on her skin before Beth jumps away, but she has no idea how he reacts. She quickly averts her eyes and keeps her head down as she hurries to her seat. 

Dean laughs and slinks to his desk. 

Beth chances a glance over in Rio's direction just before the bell rings, but he's turning away from her at the same moment. It's almost like—almost like he had been looking at her but then realized she was about to look at him. 

When the bell rings, Mr. Stewart taps a stack of papers on top of the overhead projector, straightening them to perfection. "Alright, let's start with the quiz you all took last Friday. It was a tough one for most of you." He peers at them over his glasses, perched at the end of his nose. "The class average was 65%."

A small squeak escapes from Beth's mouth. She had tried really hard—had felt good, even. But now she feels the familiar dread spreading through her body. If she doesn't turn her math grade around soon...

Mr. Stewart starts going down the aisles returning papers to students. Most groan at their grades; a few silently pump their fists in celebration. Christa Maak, who sits right in front of Beth, protests her score, insisting, "But that _was_ a 7, Mr. Stewart!" 

Beth waits anxiously for Stewart to set her own test on her desk, but he pauses to look over Christa's shoulder, squinting at her handwriting.

Impatient, Beth leans forward, trying to see the score written in red pen at the top of the next paper, but it's useless. She can't see anything.

Stewart shrugs, turning away from Christa to say, "I'm sorry, Ms. Maak. Write neater, and we won't have this problem." 

Stewart sets the quiz face-down on Beth's desk. She swallows, afraid to flip it over. 

"What'd you get?" Dean calls loudly from across the room. 

Beth looks over at him, but out of the corner of her eye, she catches Rio watching her. They briefly make eye contact, and he tilts his head at her, gesturing for her to turn the test over and check her score. 

When she does, a bright red 69% stares up at her, and normally Beth would cringe at earning a D but—it's better than when she was getting 40%. 

"I did better," Beth calls back to Dean, who embarrasses her by whooping too loudly and earning a glare from Stewart. 

Rio hears it, too, though, and he nods once, a smile playing at his lips, proud. Of himself, or her, Beth's not sure—but when he turns back around to slouch in his seat, she wonders: is this why he came to math class today?

* * *

Rio makes a big production out of sharpening his pencil in the last minute of class, so he's not lined up by the door, but hanging back, zipping up his backpack when the bell rings. 

Beth hastily taps Dean and says, "I'm going to talk to Stewart about my test score."

"Okay. Meet me at my locker? Dickie's for lunch?"

Beth smiles and squeezes his arm, agreeing, and then steps out of the crowd, letting the other kids go around her. 

When everyone's cleared out except Rio and Stewart, Beth swings her backpack around on her body so that she can unzip it and pull out the cookies. 

"Here," she says, shoving them into Rio's hands. 

He looks blankly at her. "What's this?"

"Cookies. I, um, made them." Beth tucks her bangs behind her ear.

"For me?" Rio looks positively smug about it. 

"Yes, well. To say thank you."

"For?"

Why was he making this so difficult? Beth huffs, rolling her eyes. "For tutoring me? My score went up, and I'm grateful, okay?"

"Uh-huh," Rio says, bemused. 

"What?" Beth demands. 

"Just seems weird you made ‘em to say thanks when you didn’t seem so sure about your score earlier. I’d say you even seemed a li’l nervous." 

Rio steps closer to Beth, and she is suddenly warm all over. She feels like a total idiot.

"What'd you get?" Rio asks, using their proximity to lean over and look at the test that’s pressed tightly to her chest. The tip of his finger presses down on the paper so that, upside down, he can read her score. “That’s a good number.” Rio grins mischievously, and Beth rolls her eyes. “On the real, though. You did good.”

"I mean, it's still not great, but—"

"Better than the class average, yeah? And better than before, yeah?" There's an edge and a seriousness to Rio's voice now. 

Beth nods. 

"So why you sellin’ yourself short?”

Beth isn’t sure what to say, but Rio’s looking at her like it’s not a rhetorical question. “I don’t know.”

The way Rio stares at her makes Beth feel like he’s trying to peel back her layers and see what’s underneath, like he’s trying to solve her like he solves equations. She looks down, and then, just for something to say, asks, “So… um… meet in the library after school?”

Rio licks his lips. “Actually, today’s no good for me.”

“Oh.” Beth is suddenly, strangely embarrassed. Of course he can’t do it every day—he’s got a life, things to do. She wants to ask him why, but it feels too invasive, not her place. She steps away from him and says in a rush, “Alright. No worries. See you later, then.” 

She has no idea when she’ll see him next. Maybe their daily schedule was a fluke, or he thought it was no longer needed now that her score improved? Beth silently reprimands herself for getting used to their routine so quickly, for allowing it to mean something to her so that now it felt almost like some sort of loss. God, and worse—now she's gone and gave herself away with the cookies. She goes to turn around, to leave before Rio can read any of this on her face. 

Rio reaches out for Beth’s arm. She freezes. “I could still give you a ride home, though?”

Beth glances down at Rio’s fingers on her elbow. His hands are large but delicate—something she wouldn’t have guessed. She remembers how warm they felt on her wrist. 

“Oh, no, that’s alright,” Beth says. It feels like pity, him offering to drive her home. Plus, it’s not like she’s disappointed that this will be the entirety of their interaction today. It’s not like she was looking _forward_ to tutoring, or seeing him again after the blank expanse of the weekend. She’s fine. She doesn’t need to spend any more time with him. 

“Do you wanna go to lunch?” Rio asks suddenly. Beth looks up at him and blinks. “You know, to celebrate your quiz or whatever.”

Rio takes his hand off her arm and scratches behind his ear. If she didn’t know any better, she might think the tips of Rio’s ears were burning red. 

Beth feels mad with curiosity. She can’t imagine what it would be like to do something so _normal_ with Rio. She wants to say yes but—

“I have lunch plans with Dean,” Beth explains in a quiet voice. “He’s waiting for me at his locker.”

Rio nods, jaw tight. “Yeah. Makes sense. A’ight.” He heaves his backpack up onto his shoulder. 

Before she knows what she’s saying, Beth suggests, “But… we could tomorrow?” 

Rio’s mouth just barely curves upward before he shifts his features into a mask of indifference. “Yeah, okay. Cool. Tomorrow.” Rio taps her shoulder and then lets his hand fall to squeeze her arm before he walks past her to leave the room. 

Beth feels some mixture of stunned and exhilarated and anxious. She’s going to lunch—with Rio. Somehow it feels altogether different than the hour they spend in the library hunched over a math book. Even though Rio spends much of that time asking her invasive questions and teasing her, she wonders what it will be like to spend time with him like—like _friends._

“I take it tutoring is going well?”

Nearly jumping out of her skin, Beth turns to see Mr. Stewart staring at her from his desk in the back of the classroom. She’d completely forgotten he was still in the room. 

“Oh—uh—yeah. It’s good.”

“You were averse to the idea at first, but it seems like you two are becoming good friends now.”

“Oh. I guess so. Yeah.” Beth shifts her weight from one foot to the other. 

Her initial unwillingness seems so far away now—with such a large part of it being an attempt to draw less attention to her situation and having nothing to do with Rio in particular at all (well, mostly—he came off as intimidating as well as cocky and annoying). But in a little over a week, Rio has become some strange regular fixture in her life: simultaneously reliable and constantly surprising. 

“I’ve seen you in the library every day together.”

Beth blushes. “I didn’t realize you’d been in there.”

“Sure. Making copies and whatnot." Mr. Stewart lets this statement linger and Beth processes it, how little she's been aware of her surroundings while she's with Rio. "I have to say, it was quite a surprise to see how consistently Mr. Hildalgo was showing up. Even on the days he doesn’t come to class.”

“Um,” Beth says awkwardly, not knowing how to respond. “Yeah. I guess he really wants that extra credit?”

Mr. Stewart barks out a laugh, then composes himself, readjusting his glasses, seemingly embarrassed by his lapse in professionalism. “Ah, yes, I’m sure that’s it.” There’s a pause where Mr. Stewart just stares at her, gaze loaded with meaning Beth can’t parse. Then he says, “You did well on your quiz. You two really seem to have a positive influence on each other.”

“Um. Thanks.” Beth snaps her bracelet. She doesn’t really know why Stewart is saying any of this or what he seems to be trying to imply.

“That can be rare. Two people as different as you two are, coming together and making each other better.”

Beth nods and swallows thickly. “Anything else?” She points over her shoulder with her thumb, asking to be excused. 

Just then, Dean pokes his head into the room. He snaps at Beth, hurrying her along. “Jesus, what’s taking so long? Are you coming to lunch or what?”

Beth scurries to Dean’s side, and she begins to apologize to him when Mr. Stewart interrupts her. Beth and Dean look back at him. 

“I’m glad you finally have that, Ms. Marks.”

Dean looks at Beth with some confusion, and Beth just stares blankly, taking in Mr. Stewart’s words.

“Thanks,” she manages, somewhat dumbfounded, but Mr. Stewart only tilts his chin at her before he begins shuffling some papers around on his desk. 

“What’s he glad you finally have?” Dean asks when they step into the hallway. Dean links his fingers with Beth’s and rubs his thumb along hers soothingly. 

“Oh, uh,” Beth says, stalling. She can’t exactly tell Dean that their teacher just insinuated he doesn’t bring out the best in her. “He’s just glad I finally have a tutor.”

“Yeah, but you don’t need one anymore, right?” 

“What do you mean?”

They push through the double doors and spill out into the parking lot. Dean’s friends have already left—not surprising—so Dean leads Beth to his own car. Beth feels touched that Dean chose to wait for her even though it meant his friends left him behind. 

“I mean, you said you did better on your quiz.”

Dean opens the passenger door for Beth and closes it behind her when she slides in. 

This is the part of Dean other people don’t always see. When it’s just the two of them, he can be thoughtful and sweet. But nobody else seems to recognize that. 

When Dean gets in on the driver’s side, Beth says, “So?”

“So, doesn’t that mean you can stop being tutored by that druggie?”

Beth opens her mouth to tell Dean that his name is Rio, but she stops herself. “I did better—not great. I only got a D.”

Dean shrugs. “That’s passing, isn’t it? That’s all that matters.”

“Not to me.”

Dean sighs. “Bethie. You’re too hard on yourself.”

“Why? Because I want more than below average?” Beth asks defensively. 

It was funny—Rio had said basically the same thing, that Beth was being too critical of herself, but it had felt totally different. 

“Jeez, calm down,” Dean says, glancing over at her. “I’m just saying, you can relax a little, you know?”

“I need to get straight A’s,” Beth iterates _._ “If I want to earn a scholarship—“

“Yeah, yeah, I know the spiel,” Dean says exasperatedly. He waves his hand as if he can’t be bothered to hear Beth explain it one more time. “But if we get married and I get the dealership, then who cares about college? I mean, even with a scholarship, college is expensive. And why would you want all that debt for nothing?”

Beth’s jaw drops because _what?_

“Married?”

“Yeah.” Dean looks over at her, bashful. “I mean, we love each other, don’t we?”

Beth’s head is spinning. They’ve never—they’ve never talked to each other like this. 

“You love me?” she squeaks out. 

“Yeah, of course I do. You’re, like, amazing.” Beth feels her cheeks growing hot. She didn’t know that Dean _loved_ her. Dean has had lots of girlfriends before her, and she’s pretty sure he had never told any of them he loved them. It makes Beth feel special. “Don’t you love me?”

“Yes,” Beth promises, feeling like it’s true but also like she’s conflicted. “I do. But… marriage? I’m fifteen, and you’re only—“

“Yeah, so? My parents got married right out of high school. And I can’t see anything ever breaking us up—so like. Why not talk about the future? Especially if it’s going to help you, like, calm down?”

“But if I don’t go to college, what am I going to be doing?” 

“Well, I would take care of you.” Dean holds his hand out for Beth to hold. She takes it, lacing her fingers with his. “And you would take care of me.”

“Like… a housewife?” Beth asks skeptically, parsing apart Dean’s words. 

“I mean, it’s not like you wouldn’t work at all—if you wanted to. You could help out at the dealership like my mom does. But yeah, like a housewife, I guess. I mean, you’re always talking about how you like cooking and you’re also, like, a total neat freak. I mean, you already tidy up my room when you come over—“

 _Because it’s disgusting,_ Beth thinks. 

“—and you’re always taking care of Annie, and like… this would allow you to keep doing that, if you wanted. And eventually, you know, we would have our own kids…”

“We would?”

“Of course we would. Two boys and maybe a girl.”

Beth shakes her head, amused. “I don’t think you get to pick, Dean.”

Dean looks at her in mock consternation. “Are you sure? Because the way I heard it—“

Beth laughs and Dean laughs with her, and then at the next stoplight he leans over to kiss her softly. 

“I just want you to stop putting so much pressure on yourself. I want to take care of you, okay?”

Beth bites her lip and nods. 

It’s been a long time since she felt like anyone wanted to take care of her. 

* * *

That night, Dean calls at the usual time, nine o’clock, and talks to Beth for a half an hour until his mother insists that he get off the phone and take a shower and get ready for bed. It’s all very routine—Dean tells Beth about football practice and what he thought of the new episode of _Beavis and Butthead_ or _Rocko’s Modern Life_ , and Beth tells Dean about Annie’s latest batch of chaos (today it was that she bit one of her classmates). 

At the end of the call, though, Dean says, “I love you.”

Beth feels her heart flutter. “I love you, too.”

She can practically hear Dean smiling through the phone when he says, “Goodnight, Bethie.”

Clicking _END_ and tossing the phone down to the foot of the bed, Beth links her fingers over her stomach and stares at her ceiling, thinking. 

Although she’s excited about it, she’s nervous to tell Ruby about the new stage in hers and Dean’s relationship. Ruby had never quite warmed to Dean, and her feelings towards him were exacerbated by the one time that she had seen Dean checking out Misty Rogers’ butt as she walked away.

But that had been so long ago—last school year—and Dean had really proven himself to be a great boyfriend, Beth thinks. Ruby just hadn’t given Dean a chance.

Beth starts making a mental list in her head, so she can convince Ruby to rethink her position. Ruby was Beth’s best friend. If Beth and Dean were going to get married after high school, Beth needed Ruby to come around. 

First on the list, Beth decides, is that Dean is dependable. He was always calling her at the exact same time, and he had never once forgotten.

Secondly, he was thoughtful—he was always opening the car door for Beth, giving her his sweater when she was cold, and even though she wished he would offer her some of his food at lunch, it actually was very polite of him not to since he really did believe that she was on a diet.

Thirdly, he was sensitive. He didn’t feel a need to pretend to be macho—he cared a lot about Beth wearing her bracelet, for example, and it was kind of sweet, in a way, that it meant that much to him.

Fourthly, he was funny. His jokes were dumb, sure, but he had made water come out of Beth’s nose on more than one occasion. He reminded her that she was still a teenager and she was allowed to have fun and relax from time to time. 

And lastly, and maybe more importantly? Dean was totally normal. His parents were married, and he was loved, and he wanted that for his future, too. What Beth had gone through was inconceivable to Dean, which meant that it was unlikely that he would ever become like her father and leave his family behind. For all of his flaws, Dean was sturdy and reliable and _safe._

 _Still…,_ she thinks.

Beth rolls over and stares at her desk, where she’s got tomorrow’s outfit carefully folded on her chair. 

She feels her stomach tighten into a bunch of knots.

She was going out to lunch with Rio. 

She had told Dean on the phone that she was going with Ruby.

And she had picked out the skirt she was wearing when Rio had told her she looked good.

 _But it doesn’t mean anything,_ Beth tells herself. She and Rio were just friends. And she had only lied to Dean because she didn't want him to get jealous over nothing. And she had only picked the skirt because _she_ felt good wearing it, and that had nothing to do with Rio.

Plus, it was probably one of the last days of the year she could get away with wearing it. 

So, really, Beth thinks, she had nothing to feel guilty about.

But that doesn’t stop her from having trouble falling asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there's so little Rio in this chapter! But I'm very excited for their lunch not-date next chapter :)


	5. Rio: Tuesday, Sept 28th [Lunch Date]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa gets serious about getting Rio to go to school. Rio has the misfortune of watching Beth on the morning announcements. Their first lunch date is awkward... until it's not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovelies~  
> It's been a minute since I updated.  
> Quick Recap on Chapter 4:
> 
> -Beth takes Rio's stolen money and goes on a grocery shopping spree with Ruby.  
> -Ruby gets suspicious that Beth likes Rio. Beth denies it.  
> -Beth makes Rio guilt cookies.  
> -Rio shows up to math class even though there isn't a quiz. He celebrates her improved score, even though she still only gets a D (but hey, it's higher than the class average!)  
> -Dean tells Beth that she doesn't need to worry about her grades, because they can just get married and he will take care of her. Then he confesses that he loves her for the first time. Beth says it back.  
> -On their nightly phone call, Beth lies to Dean, telling him she's going to go to lunch with Ruby the next day. She has the skirt Rio complimented pulled out for her next-day outfit, but she tells herself it doesn't mean anything.

**Tuesday, September 28th**

“Get your ass up,” Vanessa says, flinging the door of Rio’s bedroom open so that it slams against the wall with a loud _BANG_. “You are going to first period today or so help me God—”

“Jesus,” Rio says, throwing a pillow over his head to block out the light that Vanessa’s just flicked on.

“Your—school—called—again!” Vanessa rips off Rio’s blanket, leaving him half-naked in only a pair of basketball shorts. “You skipped two periods yesterday! I told you you can’t pull this shit anymore! I’m done covering for you.”

“Then why ain’t you said anything to ma yet, huh?” Rio snaps back, pulling the pillow down tighter over his ears.

Vanessa scoffs, but Rio knows her. She ain’t gonna say shit, not when she’s feeling so guilty that this is all her fault. It’s not—Rio knows that it’s not—but he knows her thinking it is will still stop her from running her mouth.

Vanessa yanks the pillow out of Rio’s hands. The light blinds him, and he groans. “Get up. You are going to school today. All day. _Every_ period.”

“And how you plannin’ on makin’ me?”

Vanessa draws herself up to her full height. “I took your keys.”

“You _what_?” Rio jerks up so that he’s sitting upright in his bed. “Give them back.”

For a half-second, he can see Vanessa wavering at the fire in Rio’s tone, but she shakes her head, steeling herself. “No.”

“How you expect me to get to school without my car?”

“I’m driving you. And I can’t be late for work so—” she sucks in a breath. “Get. Up.”

Rio scowls. “You ain’t driving me to school.” Not only does it make him feel like a child—he _can’t_ be without his car today. “I need my car today for a lunch thing—“

“The only thing you need to do is to get your fuckin’ grades up. I don’t care what drug deal or whatever you gotta make at lunch—“

“It’s not—“

“I don’t care—“

“V! Goddamn. It’s not a drug deal.”

Vanessa puts her hands on her hips and arches a brow, disbelieving, and Rio swears she looks just like their mother. “Well, I don’t really care _what_ it is. If you need your car to do it, too bad. You ain’t got it. Not today.”

“V, come on,” Rio says, switching tactics. He exhales, letting the anger deflate out of him. He holds his hands up in surrender. “It’s not a drug deal. I swear.”

Vanessa squints at him, and Rio can see that she’s reconsidering whether he’s telling the truth. “What is it then? Why do you need your car so bad, huh?”

“I just—I got a lunch thing.” He scratches at his shoulder, glancing at her. By the way her lips are pursed, he knows that she’s not going to fall for any bullshit. “With a girl.”

“A girl?” 

“Yeah. A girl.” 

Vanessa crosses her arms and looks hard at Rio. 

“What?” Rio asks, annoyed. 

“I’m not giving you back your keys so you can hook up with alguna boba in the backseat of your car.”

Rio scowls. He wishes.

“Jesus. We just goin’ to eat.”

“Then I guess you can walk.”

A strangled noise of frustration escapes Rio. He’s already thought about this—already considered the way that Elizabeth tenses up in math when they’re around all their classmates. He’s taking her down to Bandito’s, a little half-Mexican-half-Persian spot several blocks away so that they can avoid bumping into anyone they know. 

“Please?”

Vanessa peers at Rio strangely. It makes him uncomfortable, and he idly reaches up and scratches the back of his head just for something to do. 

“Who’s the girl?”

“Why?”

“You like her? I mean, more than the rest?”

“Nah.” Rio rolls his eyes. First Elena, now Vanessa? “She’s just the girl I tutor.”

“You mean... the girl you’ve been staying after school with every day last week?”

“It ain’t nothin’.”

“Uh huh.”

“Seriously.”

“Uh huh,” Vanessa says again, but now she’s grinning. 

“F’real. She’s got a boyfriend.”

Now Vanessa looks at him like she pities him, and Rio hates it even more. 

“You poor thing. You finally find a girl you like and someone else got there first.” Vanessa considers him for a moment more and then says, “Okay. I’ll give you your keys. But you have to go to every single class period every single day this week.”

“Fine,” Rio agrees, thinking that he’ll just make sure to keep his keys away from her. “But I don’t like her.”

Vanessa laughs, digging in her pocket.

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that,” Vanessa says, slapping her hand into his to give him the car key. “Remember that while you’re sitting in physics at eight a.m. every day this week just so you could drive this girl you ‘don’t care about’ somewhere for lunch. Just try not to get beat up by her boyfriend, okay? We don’t want anyone to ruin that pretty face of yours.” She pats his cheek and then pinches it before she disappears out of the room, Rio glowering at her back.

The thing was, he wasn’t stupid. He knew Elizabeth was getting him twisted, making him want to crawl out of his skin sometimes (god, just yesterday, when he’d seen Boland with his lips against her neck—)

But that was the _problem_. 

He’s never had a girl make him feel stir crazy before. 

And he’s never had a girl make him look forward to Monday before. (And for what? To have a _conversation_?)

A girl has definitely never made him change his priorities before. 

Any girl that could do that? And rob him? And lie to him? And get away with it?

A girl like that was dangerous. 

So Rio was going to use this lunch to get things back under control. He was going to figure out why she had robbed him. And he was going to make her pay.

* * *

“Do mine eyes deceive me?” Elena practically sing-songs, dropping into the empty chair next to Rio in Mr. Keppel’s physics classroom. “Are you seriously here right now? In first period? _Early?”_

Rio just yawns in response, his chin resting on his wrists on the table. 

“Welcome to what the entire rest of the world is doing at 7:55 a.m.”

Rio only grumbles, closing his eyes. 

“Seriously. Why are you here? There isn’t even a test or anything today.”

“Vanessa made me.”

“Did she hold you at knifepoint or—?”

“Took my car keys.”

Elena gasps in mock horror. “Not Minnie!”

Rio opens one eye and glances at her. “You always this loud in the mornin’?”

“Yeah. It’s called ‘being a functioning member of society.’” Elena digs a hand into her backpack and pulls out some chapstick to reapply to her lips. She boops Rio on the nose with the chapstick, and he twitches away from her, agitated. “Wow. You are really not a morning person.”

“Was up late,” Rio says, looking around them to see who might be listening. One table over, Christa Maak eats a bagel while Maggie Bays yammers on about some cheerleading drama. Behind them, Lyle Tate is hunched over a piece of paper, scrambling to finish the homework. “Carlos needed some extra help… preparin’ somethin’ for a drop.”

Elena’s eyebrows disappear into her bangs. “Weed or—?”

“Or,” Rio confirms. 

“Rio…” Elena says in a low voice. “Are you sure you want to be doing this? I mean—“

“Hell yeah. He’s payin’ me double.”

Elena purses her lips. “You’re not going to sell it on campus, are you?”

Rio shakes his head. “Nah. I’m not stupid.”

Elena shoots him a look like she’s not so sure about that, but she doesn’t say anything more. “So I guess without Minnie, we’re landlocked today for lunch?”

Rio coughs. “Uh, yes and no.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“I mean, I got Vanessa to give me back the keys but I… got plans.”

“Let me guess: you, Dylan, and the backseat.” Elena scoffs, tossing her chapstick in her bag rougher than necessary. “It is beyond me why she keeps putting up with you.”

Not wanting to give Elena any more ammo, he decides not to tell her about Elizabeth. He just yawns again, letting her think whatever she wants.

More students start filing into the classroom; Mr. Keppel starts writing the agenda on the board as the sound of backpacks unzipping and binders being slapped onto tables fills the room.

“Make sure you’re all situated before announcements,” Mr. Keppel says, looking over his shoulder. “And be prepared to listen quietly and attentively.”

“Oh, this’ll be good,” Elena snickers. “Your girl’s about to be on TV.”

Rio ignores her. He knows she’s going to be scrutinizing him the entire time Elizabeth’s up on the screen, and he’s determined to look indifferent. 

Mr. Keppel fiddles with the remote, pointing it up at the large TV hanging in the front corner of his room. When it’s on and tuned to the correct channel, he reaches up and puts a tape into the VHS player. 

A cheesy trumpet sound tunes and _MLK HIGH SCHOOL MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS_ appears in big, bubbly black and gold lettering. The title slide disappears to reveal Elizabeth standing awkwardly in front of the cafeteria doors in the outfit she wore yesterday. She clearly has no idea what to do with her hands because they hang limply by her sides. There are a few seconds of dead air before she animates and says, in a falsely cheerful voice that sounds nothing like her, “Hi! It’s Beth Marks here to tell you that today for lunch they’ll be serving Dutch waffles with strawberries!”

Rio can feel Elena’s eyes boring into him, and he tries not to grimace. 

When Elizabeth gives a lopsided smile and a thumbs up to the camera, Rio physically cannot force himself to watch it for one more second. She’s absolutely terrible, but also incredibly _cute_ , and Rio _hates_ himself for thinking so. 

He rocks his jaw and looks up at the ceiling as the camera cuts to a different shot of Elizabeth standing in the quad as she says, “Today’s weather forecast is a high of…”

“I can’t believe _that’s_ the girl you’re obsessing over. Like, can you pick a bigger nerd to have your first crush on?” Elena asks, barely bothering to whisper. 

“Shut up,” Rio hisses.

“Are you _blushing_?” Elena prods, poking a long fingernail into his cheek. Rio bats her hand away from his face, and Elena laughs. “You’re _totally_ blushing!”

“Elena. Christopher,” Mr. Keppel calls warningly from across the room. A few kids turn to look at them. Christa Maak twists back and glares.

“Sorry,” Rio mumbles. 

Rio can _feel_ Elena’s smile vibrating at him as she keeps her eyes on him. “Literally. Of all the girls in the school.”

“ _Stop_.”

“Sweet, _flowery_ Beth Marks: bad at math, terrible at camera presence, but oh-so- _good_ at winning petty criminal’s hearts.”

“Do I need to move you?” Mr. Keppel calls again.

Rio considers saying _yes_ , just to get away from Elena, but she smiles innocently and shakes her head before he has the chance.

Turning back to the television screen, Rio sees Elizabeth standing in front of a terrible green screen that’s been altered to look like outer space. She wears an astronaut’s helmet to make her final announcement: “Just a reminder: Homecoming is less than three weeks away. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. The theme is To the Stars. Don’t forget to ask that special someone!” 

A boy in an alien mask appears behind Elizabeth holding a sign decorated with hieroglyphics that says “DANCE WITH ME?” Elizabeth pretends to swoon, hand to her forehead, and says, “I thought you’d never ask!”

It’s… bad. Very bad.

A few kids chuckle in second-hand embarrassment as the credits start rolling and even Rio feels the tips of his ears burn. 

Mr. Keppel points the remote at the television and presses the _off_ button. The announcements disappear with a soft click. 

“Alright, that’s enough of… that,” he announces awkwardly, clearing his throat. “Today we’re going to be looking at the Law of Conservation of Energy. Pass these back, please.” 

Mr. Keppel hands a stack of assignment sheets to the person nearest him, and they get passed back row by row. When Christa Maak turns around to hand it to Rio, though, she drops the entire stack before his fingers even touch it. The papers scatter everywhere all over the floor.

“Oops,” she says flatly, eyebrows raised, like she’s not sorry at all. She turns around, leaving Rio to clean up the mess alone. 

Rio scowls. “Why—?”

Elena flushes. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Rio asks, turning up at her as he crawls under the desk to start gathering the papers. 

“I forgot. She’s friends with Dylan.”

“So?” Rio reaches for the papers nearest him, tapping them against the floor to reorder them neatly.

“ _So_ ,” Elena whispers, like it’s obvious. “She probably overheard us… you know… talking?"

Rio looks at her like he has no idea what she's talking about.

"About _Beth_?”

Rio huffs. “ _Fuck_.”

* * *

She’s wearing the skirt—the one he’d (sort of, in a backhanded way) told her she’d looked good in.

It’s the first thing Rio notices when he walks into Ms. Patel’s English classroom. 

_She robbed you,_ he reminds himself. _Get it under control. Make her pay._

But Elizabeth’s already sitting down, and he’s distracted by her long white legs, crossed at the ankle. She’s turned toward a chubby black girl Rio’s not familiar with, chatting away. There’s an ease to her he don’t see much, and maybe he’s staring too much, cataloging the difference, because Elizabeth’s friend notices him. A flicker of recognition passes over her face, but she frowns, looking at Rio like he’s trouble. Then she shifts, pointedly ignoring him. 

Rio hangs his backpack over the back of his seat and slinks into the chair, watching as the friend says something to Elizabeth. Elizabeth immediately goes to jerk her head and look across the room at him when the friend reaches out, grabs Elizabeth’s arm, and hisses something to draw her attention back. 

The second her friend’s not paying attention, though, Elizabeth looks over her shoulder again.

She smiles at him. He can see her extra-pointy canine tooth, and his stomach twists. 

_Shit,_ he thinks.

She was going to make this difficult, wasn’t she?

* * *

Rio makes a production out of putting away the single sheet of paper and the pencil he had out for math class, fiddling with the zipper and pretending he’s looking for something deep in a pocket.

On the other side of Mr. Stewart’s classroom, Elizabeth stands with Dean, who’s scratching his head and looking down at her. 

“What do you mean?” 

Seeing as how they’re the only three left behind—besides Mr. Stewart, who is carefully unwrapping a sandwich at his desk and acting like he’s not eavesdropping—Rio can hear everything that they’re saying.

“I _told_ you,” Elizabeth says, fiddling with that stupid bracelet on her wrist. “I can’t go to Dickie’s today. I have plans with Ruby.”

Rio blinks. _Ruby?_

Mr. Stewart coughs in surprise. Rio turns to look at him and Mr. Stewart looks up at the ceiling, pretending not to be involved. 

“When did you tell me that?” Dean asks, confusion etched on his face.

“Last night, on the phone,” Elizabeth reminds him. Dean pouts. “It’s just one day.”

Dean bobs his head back and forth like he’s considering something. Rio feels his jaw tighten. What is he, her father? Why was he acting like it was his decision?

“Alright. I guess,” Dean concedes. “But maybe you could come over tonight then? My mom’s got a PTA meeting…”

Rio feels his stomach clench. 

Elizabeth glances at the clock. Three minutes of their 35-minute lunch have already passed. They still have to make it out to the parking lot and deal with the traffic jam. They still need to drive there, to order, to eat—

“We can talk about it later, okay? I really need to meet Ruby...”

Dean shrugs. “Fine.” He goes to start walking out the door, then notices that Elizabeth isn’t following him. He looks back at her questioningly.

“Oh, um.” Elizabeth licks her lips. “Actually, Ruby’s meeting me here.”

“She’s taking a while.”

Elizabeth brushes the hair off her face. “Yeah. Uh. She’s coming from S Hall, I think.”

Dean nods, then knocks on the door frame twice. “Okay then. Love you.”

Elizabeth smiles weakly. Dean disappears, and when Elizabeth turns to look at Rio, he realizes suddenly that he’s been staring. Hard.

He rips his eyes away from Elizabeth’s and zips up his backpack noisily. Throwing his bag over his shoulder, he crosses the room to her. 

He clears his throat.

“Ready?” he asks her, suddenly recognizing how different, how _weighted_ this lunch feels. 

“Mhm,” Elizabeth squeaks, and he knows she’s feeling it, too, that something has shifted between them, nameless and unspoken. 

He’s— _fuck._ He’s _nervous._

This is new for him.

He tries to shake it off.

 _She robbed you. Get it under control. Make her pay._ It replays like a mantra in his head. 

They both try to exit the door frame at the same time, though, neither waiting for the other, and they collide.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Rio says, jumping back from her.

Elizabeth lets out a jittery giggle. “It’s okay.”

“Have fun, you two,” Mr. Stewart calls from his desk in the corner. 

Elizabeth flushes crimson. 

* * *

“You wanna listen to music?” Rio asks once they get out of the parking lot. 

They haven’t done anything except exchange awkward small talk since they left the classroom— _how’s your day going_ and _that class was boring_ and _the weather’s nice today, yeah?_

Rio feels like he’s dying.

He’s been racking his mind for something interesting to say, but his brain is completely empty, wiped clean like a blank slate. 

_Was this a thing that happened to people?_ he wonders, because it was dumb as fuck.

“Sure.” Elizabeth is sitting as far away from him as she can on the bench seat, leg practically pressed up against the door handle. The leather upholstery is too hot from being parked out in the sun, though, so she keeps lifting her naked thighs off the seat in this distracting way that makes Rio keep taking his eyes off the road.

Rio presses a tape into the tape deck and some jazz music swells—only to swiftly die. 

“Shit.” Jabbing at some buttons, Rio explains, “Sometimes the tape deck doesn’t work, and my antenna’s broke. I’m trying to fix it all but—“ He hits eject and tries again. Nothing. 

“It’s okay,” Elizabeth says sweetly, understanding. “I don’t mind.”

Rio hates when she’s nice—when she’s all _accommodating_ and _polite_ , like a little debutante groomed for being some meathead’s housewife. He’d rather she rag him about listening to jazz again, or complain that he doesn’t have one of those sunblockers that go in the window because now her thighs were on fire, or—fuck. Anything that made it feel like things were _normal_ between them.

The silence stretches. 

“So, um,” Elizabeth says, twisting her bracelet, casting about for conversation. “Are you liking _The Great Gatsby_?” 

This was the novel they were studying in English today, only Rio had been lost for the entire discussion. He usually binge reads the book the weekend before the paper is due and calls it good since he never shows up to the class anyway. 

“Haven’t started it yet.”

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.”

“It’s good. It’s about this guy who is in love with this girl, only they’re from different social classes? So it doesn’t work out—but then he, like, goes off and does a bunch of shady stuff, and comes back and wants to find her and—” When Rio turns to glance at her, Elizabeth stops short, like she feels like she’s talking too much. She exhales heavily. “Anyway. Um. You’ll like it, I think.”

Rio hums a vague response. He seriously doubts that he will—he got real bored real fast of reading stuff by dead white guys, and that’s basically the entirety of high school English class. But it feels weird to say it now, to tease her or to give her shit. He can’t do it when she’s _trying_ so hard.

Rio drums his fingers along the steering wheel. Elizabeth looks out the window, snapping her bracelet against her wrist. The plastic jewels jingle against each other quietly. 

What he _wants_ to ask her is why she lied to her boyfriend about who she was going to lunch with. What he _wants_ to ask her is why her friend was giving him the stink eye. But something stops him. 

Finally, Rio pulls into the parking lot. Bandito’s is tucked into one of those cheap little strip malls in between a dollar store and a halal market. It’s got a faded blue sign out front, and Rio can see from here that it’s mostly empty inside besides one table with a few women in hijabs and another with an old man sitting alone.

“Where are we eating?” 

“It’s called Bandito’s. It’s like two restaurants in one—Mexican or Persian food, whatever you’re in the mood for.” 

“I haven’t had really either before,” Elizabeth admits. He can feel the anxiousness radiating off of her, and it settles into his skin, too. 

_Shit._ He didn’t even think of that—he’d only thought about how he was trying to get her away from the rest of their classmates. 

“Ever?”

“I mean… not really?”

“We can… we can go somewhere else, I guess?” Rio suggests, glancing at the car clock. There’s less than twenty-five minutes left of lunch. But maybe—?

“It’s fine,” Elizabeth says reassuringly. “I can try something new.”

Rio nods, but his jaw is tight. 

* * *

They stand in at the counter, looking above them at the menu on the wall.

“What do you recommend?”

“I like gyros,” Rio says, explaining what they are and pointing to a section on the Persian side of the menu. 

Elizabeth tilts her head, like she’s considering. She purses her lips. Then she asks about a completely different menu item—something off the appetizer list. “What’s kashkeh bademjan?”

“I think it’s like eggplant somethin’ or other.” Even though the menu has no photos or descriptions, Elizabeth studies it like she’s deciphering runes or something. “If you want Mexican food, the chicken burrito’s good with mole.”

Elizabeth thinks for a second. 

“What about the tacos?”

“Yeah, I like ‘em, but they’re small. You’d need to order a couple of ‘em.”

“Maybe I’ll just get fries.”

Rio feels a flash of irritation. If she didn’t want to eat here, she could’ve just said so. He would’ve taken her somewhere else. 

“You not hungry or somethin’?”

“No—it’s not that,” Elizabeth says, fumbling over her words. She looks at her feet. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t gotta be—”

“Hello!” Esta, the woman behind the counter, trills when she appears from the back kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. Rio comes here a lot, so she beams, happy to see him. “How are you, darling?”

“Good, you?”

“Oh, good, very good. Where are the lovebirds?” she asks, looking around for Mar and Elena. She spots Elizabeth and her grin becomes even wider somehow. “Ah, _you_ brought someone special today! Is this your girlfriend?”

Rio can feel his ears burn hot, and he sees Elizabeth turn beet red.

“Oh, no!” Esta says. “I have made it awkward. Maybe too early for such a question, no?” She laughs. 

Rio coughs. Elizabeth starts fiddling with that fucking bracelet again.

“Are you getting a gyro today or your burrito?” Esta asks, trying to smooth over the interaction.

“I’ll get the burrito.”

“You want the grande size, yes?”

“Yeah. And a coke. And an empanada, too.”

Esta glances at Elizabeth, trying to suss out whether or not it would be awkward to ask if she’s on his tab. Considering she stole all Rio’s money, though, Rio thinks not. He pulls out his wallet and lays down the cash. 

He steps back to allow Elizabeth to order. She ends up ordering just two tacos.

“Steak, shrimp, or chicken?”

Elizabeth steps back and doublechecks the menu for some reason, like Esta didn't just lay out the options. “Chicken, please.”

“Okay. Are you sure you want just two, dear?” Esta asks. “They are itty bitty.” She pinches her fingers together.

“That’s okay,” Elizabeth says quietly. “Just two, please.”

“Something to drink?”

“Do you have a water cup?”

Esta sets one out on the counter. “Any dessert for you? How about an empanada?”

Elizabeth looks up at the menu again. “How much are they?”

Rio’s brow furrows. 

“Two dollars.”

“That’s okay,” Elizabeth says. 

“I guess the gentleman will just have to share, eh?” Esta says to Rio. She winks. “Okay, dear. That’s five dollars total.”

Rio watches as Elizabeth pulls her backpack around and digs out her wallet, only to take out a small wad of one dollar bills. She counts out five, leaving her one dollar leftover. She puts it in the tip jar. 

Rio doesn’t see any of Daddy’s credit cards in the wallet or—well, anything really. A student ID card. That’s it. He frowns.

“Okay, you can sit,” Esta says, gesturing to the tables. “I will bring it out for you when it is ready.” She disappears behind the swinging metal door into the kitchen.

* * *

They sit across from each other. Elizabeth fiddles idly with her bracelet, looking anywhere but at Rio. She studies the cheap plastic Persian art on the walls and the menu again, then she examines her fingernails. Rio stares only at her.

He keeps turning over the last five minutes in his head, piecing it all together. Elizabeth wasn’t fussy about the _food_ , he didn’t think—but the _price_?

But what happened to all of his money?

And didn’t she live in that big old house?

He’d expected her to be one of those princesses with an unlimited allowance, not—

“Here you go, man,” Esta’s son Arman says. He sets down Rio’s tray and then Elizabeth’s, and then he adjusts his beanie, pulling it down lower to tuck away some of his long hair. Underneath Rio’s tray, he can see the $10 bill poking out. A little too loudly, Arman asks, “How’s it going?”

Rio glances at the counter to see Esta wiping it down with a wet towel, humming happily.

“Good, good,” Rio says, slapping his hand. Elizabeth watches intently as Rio slides the $10 out from under the tray and stuffs it into his pocket. Lowly, he asks, “You need a dime bag?”

“That’s really good to hear, man,” Arman says, shielding a thumbs up and an exaggerated wink from his mother.

“I’ll leave it in the usual spot, yeah?” Rio murmurs, turning to his food, knife and fork in hand. 

Elizabeth lets out a shocked squeak. 

“Cool, cool, man,” Arman drawls, like they’re wrapping up a conversation. “I’ll see you around.” 

Arman disappears into the kitchen.

“Did you just do a _drug deal?!_ ” Elizabeth whisper-screeches. “You’re going to give him drugs? _Now_?”

“Hey, could you tone it down?” Rio snaps, glancing over at Esta refilling the salsa station now. He takes a bite of his burrito. “Kinda the most important part of the job is, you know, _not_ advertisin’ it to the whole fuckin’ world.” 

“Well, you did it right in front of _me_!” Elizabeth huffs. 

“You don’t count,” Rio says, pointing a forkful of burrito at her. 

Indignant, Elizabeth straightens up. “And why not?” She takes it as an insult, as a diminishment. 

“‘Cause, darlin’, you already know my sins. And I already know you like me anyway.” Rio smirks—only then it cracks into something genuine, because god, at least now the stilted small talk was over. At least now she was _herself_ , all crabby and provoked—so he could be _himself_ , all amused-by-it and purposefully-provocative. At least now they could have _fun._ He looks down at his plate quickly, trying to hide the smile from her. 

“I don’t—” Elizabeth begins to protest, to say something like she _doesn’t_ like him anyway, only then she maybe realizes that it’ll only make her look defensive. She snaps her jaw shut, silenced. 

Rio runs his tongue along his teeth, trying to tamp down his grin.

“Well, I’m just saying,” she says, after taking her first bite of taco. “Don’t make me your accomplice.”

Rio barks on a laugh, because ain’t that fucking rich—despite being blurry on the details, he _was_ clear on the fact that she _had_ robbed him. And now she was mad at the idea of being a sidekick to a crime that just happened in _front_ of her? Where she wasn’t even _involved?_

Then his laugh turns genuine, because she’s the weirdest girl he’s ever met. She’s always straddling the line between haughty and uncertain of herself, indignant about one thing and then judgmental about another in the next breath. 

Elizabeth doesn’t know why he’s laughing at her, and her cheeks pinken—only then she can’t help it—she laughs a little at Rio laughing, and then she breaks out into a full giggle, and it’s cute, the way her little canine tooth sticks out when she’s really, genuinely happy and—

Suddenly leaning forward in his seat, Rio remembers something absurd she said earlier. “So… you really haven’t had Mexican food?” he asks incredulously.

It takes a second for Elizabeth to regain her composure. 

“I mean—I’ve _had_ Mexican food,” Elizabeth clarifies, “but nothing, you know, _authentic._ I make quesadillas or enchiladas sometimes for dinner, I guess, but just with sauce from a can. And they’re super boring because my sister won’t eat, like, a single vegetable—”

“You make ‘em?” Rio interrupts. “Like... you cook for your family?”

It reminds him of Vanessa, the way she often made meals for everyone when their parents worked late, but he’d figured Elizabeth had one of those stay-at-home-mom types, the kind that would have the table set and a meal warming in the oven ready to serve as soon as her dad arrived home in his suit and tie. 

Elizabeth’s flushes, like the admission is somehow embarrassing. 

“Sometimes?” she admits. 

“That’s dope,” Rio says, sucking down some of his Coke. He means it. It made her a little less of a princess, he thought. “Plus I heard you’re a good cook.”

“From who?”

“My friend Elena. She’s in your Home Ec class.” Rio begins cutting off a large piece of his burrito.

“You... talk about me?” 

Rio looks up at her. Her eyes are wide, curious. Rio thinks of Elena and Mar teasing him in Mar’s basement about how he couldn’t stop talking about the way she’d robbed him. He thinks about he’d gone into the weekend sure that Elizabeth meant nothing to him, and by the end of it, he’d been looking antsy for math class on Monday morning. How he’d been really goddamn irritated at Vanessa for picking up a last-minute shift and leaving him to babysit the girls and cancel tutoring. 

“You got a sister?” Rio asks instead of answering her question. 

Elizabeth stares at him, catching the omission, but she drops it and nods. “Annie. She’s six.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Dunno, just—kinda pegged you as an only child.”

“What?” Elizabeth asks, wrinkling her brow. “Why?” She finishes her second taco and sips on her water. 

“Refuses to ask for help. One of them weird overachiever types.” Elizabeth scowls. “Bratty.”

“I am _not_ bratty!”

“Okay you say that, but—“

“But what!”

“I literally watched you stamp your foot once. Like a fuckin’ cartoon character.”

Elizabeth balks, searching for a retort. “Yeah, well—“ She grins. “You already know my sins. I’m convinced you like me anyway.”

Rio’s tongue darts out to lick the smile off his face. 

“Let me do you.”

“Happily,” Rio says easily, and Elizabeth’s eyes widen and her chest gets all blotchy. 

“Gross,” she hisses, face all scrunched. “Don’t be such a teenage boy.”

“Bossy, too,” he adds. “That’s also gotta go on the list.”

“Rio!”

“A’ight, a’ight,” he says, swallowing his last bite of burrito and dabbing a napkin to his lips. “Do me.”

“Well.” Elizabeth peers at him, head cocked, studying. He gets it now, what she feels like when he’s scrutinizing her. He shifts in his seat. “You’re annoying, to start.”

“Ouch, darlin’. That hurts.” Rio puts his hand mockingly to his heart. 

“You have no regard for the rules—“

“Now that’s true—“

“I feel like you _have_ to get your way or you pout—“

”I do not _pout_ —“ 

"Have you _seen_ your bottom lip?"

Rio squints at her. "Huh?"

“But you’re also confident," she says, barreling on. "And a bit of a charmer—"

“Am I?” Rio flashes his teeth. 

Elizabeth considers him. “I’m going to say you’re the baby. Older… sisters, I think. Two of them.” Elizabeth links her fingers and nods, pleased with her analysis. 

She’s such a fucking nerd. 

“Dead wrong.” He gives himself a second to enjoy the way her face falls, then he pulls his empanada apart and slides half over to her. “Got three sisters. One older, two younger.”

“No way. You have little sisters? I can’t even imagine that,” Elizabeth says, taking the lime from Rio and copying him, squeezing it over the mango and cream cheese filling. 

“Yep. That’s why I couldn’t hang after school yesterday. I was babysittin’.”

“You _babysit_?”

“Sometimes.”

Elizabeth’s eyes sparkle. “That’s cool.”

Rio hums.

“Try it,” he prods, nodding at the empanada as he finishes off his last bite. 

“Oh, yeah,” she says, quickly looking away, like she realizes she’s been staring. 

Rio watches as Elizabeth’s teeth sink into the dessert. 

“Oh my god,” she says, hand covering her mouth to hide her chewing. She points a finger to the empanada. “This is _so_ good.”

“Yeah?” 

“I need to learn how to make these.”

“You want some more?” Rio asks before he realizes what he’s doing. “They got, like, apple cinnamon and strawberry and blueberry, too, I think.”

Rio’s eyes flash to Elizabeth twisting her bracelet again. “Maybe next time.”

“My treat,” he says, ignoring the voice in his head reminding him that she _stole his money._

“Oh, no, I couldn’t—“

“Come on. I gotta pay you back for those cookies, right? They were fuckin’ good, by the way. Had to fight my sisters off.”

Elizabeth glows. “Well…” she glances at the clock. “Do we have time?”

Rio looks. There are only about twelve minutes left of lunch. Between ordering and heating and eating—?

“Maybe,” he says reluctantly. “We might be a couple minutes late, though.”

He can see Elizabeth weighing the options in her head. 

She was too much of a stickler, he knew. She was going to say no.

But then she shrugs, smiling shyly. “Okay.”

* * *

Elizabeth’s finishing off the last of the empanadas—he got one of each flavor, including another mango, and they split all of them down the middle and share—when Rio comes back in from his car, the baggie of weed in his jacket pocket. 

He glances at the men’s restroom, can see from here that the little red OCCUPIED sign is still locked into place from before he went outside. 

“Shit,” he says, looking at the clock. They were going to be later than expected if this dragged out. 

Elizabeth looks up at him. “What?” 

“I need you to do me a favor.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widen. “With the—?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Me?_ ” she squeaks, balking. “I _told_ you I wasn’t going to be your accomplice—“

Rio pops an eyebrow. “How late do you wanna be?”

Elizabeth swallows, then squares her shoulders.

“Fine.” She holds out her hand. “What do I have to do?”

“Well, first,” Rio says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You gotta be a little more discreet.”

Elizabeth snatches her hand back. “Okay.”

Rio slides into the seat next to her, looking over at Esta, who’s doing a drop of large bills from her till. He slides the baggie over to Elizabeth, nudging her with his elbow. 

“Okay. You’re gonna go into the women’s bathroom. You’re gonna pop open the paper towel dispenser, and you’re gonna set this baggie of weed inside.” 

When Elizabeth takes the baggie from Rio, her hand brushes against his. His eyes dart down, and he briefly forgets what he's in the middle of saying.

“And then?” she presses.

Rio massages the knuckles on his hand, shaking himself off. 

“Then you’re going to come out and tell Arman that they’re out of paper towels in the ladies restroom. Got it?”

Elizabeth looks over at Arman, wiping down tables on the other side of the small restaurant. 

“Why do you do all that? Why don’t you just, like, leave it on the sink since you send him in right afterward, anyway?”

Rio sighs. “Elizabeth.”

“I’m just saying.”

“What if someone’s waitin’ in line, huh? What if he’s busy with a customer when you come out? I’m tellin’ you: number one rule is _discreet_.”

Elizabeth crosses her arms, defeated. “How do I pop open the dispenser?”

“There’s a lock on top. They keep the key in it. It’s just a little plastic thing.”

“What if it’s not there?”

“It’ll be there.”

“But what if it’s not? Just this once?”

“Elizabeth,” he says with exasperation.

She huffs. “Fine.”

He watches her disappear into the restroom. She looks both ways before she closes the door, like she’s in a spy movie or something, and Rio rolls his eyes—but he can’t help smiling at the same time.

“So when are you going to make her your lovebird, eh?” Esta asks, suddenly appearing at Rio’s shoulder. 

“Huh?”

Esta shakes her head, piling Elizabeth’s tray on top of Rio’s. She leans over to wipe down his table. “You look at her like she’s the sun.”

Rio frowns. “You ain’t supposed to look at the sun. Bad for your eyes.”

“Boys,” Esta says, flicking him on the ear. “You all have no head for romance.”

She bustles off to the trash cans to clean their table and Rio hunches over, staring at the bathroom door again. Elizabeth’s still in there. He watches the slow hand of the clock and sighs, looking up at the ceiling. What was she _doing_ in there?

Finally, the door creaks and he looks over to see Elizabeth come out. She mouths something at him angrily and shakes her head, but Rio has no idea what she’s said. 

Elizabeth goes up to Arman—at this point, he’s behind the counter again with Esta—and she points a thumb over her shoulder. 

“Um? I think you’re out of paper towels in there?”

“On it,” Arman says, dropping below the counter to pop up with another roll. 

“I’ll do it,” Esta says, reaching for the roll, “since it is the ladies room.”

“Oh, uh—” Arman lifts a finger, as if to say _Wait_ , but he doesn’t. He just gapes like a fish, dumbfounded, watching as his mom rounds the corner to go around the counter.

Rio freezes. He tries to think of a way to stop Esta because she's gonna go in that room and she's gonna see that that dispenser ain't empty, and she's gonna know Elizabeth was up to something weird and—

“Excuse me?” Elizabeth says sweetly. 

Esta turns toward her.“Yes, dear?”

“Can I… talk to you?” Elizabeth gets close to Esta and says something low—Rio can’t hear anything from the table. 

While Esta gives Elizabeth her full attention, leaning forward so that Elizabeth can whisper, Arman seizes the opportunity to come around the counter, grab the paper towel roll from Esta silently, and disappear into the bathroom.

“One second, darling,” Esta says to Elizabeth. She goes into the backroom and Elizabeth looks at Rio. She gives him that same cheesy thumbs up she did in her morning announcement video. Rio looks down at the table and shakes his head, massaging his jaw to try and wipe away the grin. 

Esta comes back just as Arman comes out of the bathroom, whistling. Elizabeth takes something from Esta, but Rio can’t see it. She slides it into her back pocket before she scurries back to Rio at the table.

“What was—?”

“Let’s go,” she says urgently.

“A’ight, a’ight,” he says, holding his hands up in surrender. He scoots out of the booth, waves to Esta and Arman, and follows Elizabeth out the door.

* * *

“Okay, what _was_ that?” Rio asks when they’re safely buckled up in his car and ready to leave. He looks behind him to pull out of the parking lot.

“Okay, _one_ ,” Elizabeth says, holding up a frustrated finger. “There was no key. So!” She breathes harshly out of her nose, looking at him with arched brows. 

“Chill!”

“I just want it to be on record that I was right—”

“Clearly you figured it out, yeah?”

“I just want it to be on record!” Elizabeth protests. 

“Fine! It’s on record. You were right.”

“ _Thank_ you,” she says all prim, and she actually _preens_ , flicking imaginary dirt off her bare knees. 

“Told you.”

“Told me what?”

Shaking his head, Rio smiles, the tip of his tongue darting out between his teeth. He glances out the window. “One of those weird overachiever types. Even when it comes to crime. Thought you didn’t wanna be my accomplice, huh?”

Elizabeth gapes. “I—we—we were going to be late.”

“We _are_ late,” Rio says, nodding toward the clock. Class started three minutes ago.

Elizabeth’s silent.

“So no key, huh? What’d you do?”

Beth holds out a thumb to him. “I have really long fingernails.”

A laugh erupts out of Rio. “F’real?”

“Yeah. Only I’m short, so I couldn’t reach the top. I had to climb on top of the sink and then kinda lean over.”

“You serious right now?”

“Yeah!”

“You really committed.” He smirks. 

Elizabeth looks away, but he can see her jaw moving—can tell she’s biting her lip. 

“So what’d you tell Esta? His mom?” Rio asks.

“Oh!” Elizabeth lifts up her legs to dig into her back pocket. “Tada!” She produces a small, thin, and round package, holding it in front of his face like a trophy.

“A tampon?”

“Yeah! I told her I’d just, you know, _started,_ but I didn’t have any quarters for the dispenser and could she, you know… help.”

Rio stares at her.

“What?” Her shoulders kinda cave in, like she’s self-conscious, like she thinks he’s _judging_ her.

“You’re pretty fuckin' quick on your feet, huh?”

Elizabeth beams. 

* * *

Rio pulls into a parking spot at the school. They’re officially over five minutes late to class, which means that they were officially marked absent. The sheet was already at the office, the absent slots marked, the robocall sent. It didn’t matter if Rio went in and got a tardy slip. The message was already on the machine.

Rio turns the ignition off. Elizabeth doesn’t move. She’s got her elbow on the window sill and her head in her hand, looking out. The sun dapples across her freckled legs, and Rio can’t stop staring at the spot where her skirt ends. 

“You a’ight?” he asks awkwardly. Rio knows Elizabeth cares a lot about rules and schedules and stuff—but _she’d_ said yes to the empanadas. 

“I just—” She sighs. “I don’t really want to go back to school today.”

“So... don’t.”

Elizabeth turns to look at him. Her brow is furrowed, her mouth slightly open, like she’s never considered that that’s an option.

“What do you mean?”

“Skip.”

“And do what?” Elizabeth asks, baffled. 

“I dunno. Whatever you want.”

“What's the point of that? I’m just supposed to skip school and hang out by myself?”

“No,” Rio says, shaking his head. “With me.”

They stare at each other for a moment, Rio challenging her, waiting, uncertain.

Then she nods, once. “Okay.”

* * *

They go to the mall. There’s a river right next to it, and first they go down under the bridge and skip rocks. It’s still warm outside, and the sunlight flickers across the water. When the light hits her hair, Rio sees that it turns a little red. He’s never noticed that before. 

Rio’s terrible at getting his rock to bounce more than three times, and Elizabeth rags shit on him for it. She can get up to six every time, no problem. She cheers when she does, and gives a sad sarcastic clap whenever Rio manages to hit four skips.

"You tried," she says.

Rio’s jaw rocks.

“See,” Elizabeth teases, poking his chin. “You absolutely pout.”

After, they dink around in the mall, just browsing. Elizabeth drags him into Border’s and reads the synopses of about twenty-five different books while Rio tries not to groan, but then he makes her go into Zumiez with him where he goes back and forth between two pairs of shoes for nearly twenty minutes before he buys nothing at all. 

He gets them Frosties from Wendy’s (it was the only thing she would tolerate, considering they were so cheap) and then he suggests that they go see a movie.

“I shouldn’t spend the money,” she says, pretending she has any in that empty wallet of hers. She turns away from him and acts like she’s deeply interested in the Daisy's window display of homecoming dresses. She sucks her milkshake loudly through the straw. 

“Well, this is half yours, right?” Rio asks, pulling the $10 bill out of his pocket. Elizabeth glances at him. “You earned it.”

“No, I can’t,” Elizabeth says, refusing. 

_Of course she was going to be difficult about it,_ he thinks.

“Fifty/fifty. That’s what accomplices get.” He grins. 

So they go to the movies. Rio buys two tickets to _Rudy_ with a plan to sneak into _Dazed and Confused_ (his choice, obviously, because there was no way she was getting him to see _Airborne_ ), and when she disappears into the bathroom lobby, he buys a large popcorn, a soda, and a box of M&Ms before she can protest.

“Hope you like Coke,” he says to her when she comes out. He gestures to the two straws.

“That’s way more than 50% of the profits,” Elizabeth says. “I’m not sharing any of that.”

“Fine,” Rio says. “Add 'stubborn' to the list, too.”

“Only if you admit you pout.”

“Nah. That ain't happenin'."

“Well, then I guess add 'stubborn' to your list, too.” She gives him an uppity face like, _So there._

Rio just rolls his eyes.

But in the darkness of the movie theater, she reaches over for some popcorn. Within twenty minutes, she’s got the box of M&Ms on her lap and she’s sucking down the Coke. Rio almost teases her for it, but he doesn’t really want her to stop, so he decides to say nothing at all.

* * *

They make it back to school a few minutes before the final bell. There’s no point going in, so they sit in the car, the tub of half-eaten popcorn between them in the seat.

Elizabeth grabs a handful and puts the pieces in her mouth one by one with her other hand, like she's a fucking bird or something. 

“I’ve never skipped school before,” Elizabeth says, as if Rio couldn’t have figured that out that by… well, _everything_ about her.

“You’re a natural,” he teases. “A breakout star.”

Elizabeth scoffs, then idly plays with her bracelet while she looks out the window. “I wonder who recorded the morning announcements for tomorrow in A/V.”

 _Hopefully someone who knows what to do with their hands,_ Rio thinks. But all he says is, “You jealous the alien’s gonna ask someone else to the dance?”

Elizabeth flushes furiously, then turns away. “God, those are bad.”

“They really are.”

They’re silent for a moment. 

“Your boyfriend takin’ you?”

“Huh?”

“To the dance.”

Elizabeth looks back over at Rio. He’s staring at her. He should look away. He doesn’t.

“I think so. Why? Are you—?” Elizabeth clears her throat. She glances up at him, then starts twisting her bracelet without realizing. “Are you taking someone?”

“Not really my scene,” Rio says, tugging his beanie down.

Elizabeth nods.

Distantly, they hear the school bell system ring, and Rio looks over his shoulder to see students start spilling out of the double doors.

“Well, I guess I should—” Elizabeth begins to say.

But Rio starts to ask, “Why’d you tell your boyfriend you were goin’ to lunch with Ruby?” at the same time.

“—go,” Elizabeth finishes weakly.

Rio swallows, still looking over his shoulder just past Elizabeth’s face. He can see the people begin to invade the parking lot, opening and slamming car doors, their laughter and yells flying dully through the air.

At first, Rio thinks she’s not going to answer, that she’s going to pretend she didn’t hear it, it takes her so long. But then she says, “Sometimes he… I don’t know? Gets jealous of stupid stuff?”

Rio juts his lip out, nods once. He can hear the snap of her bracelet against her skin. 

“But there’s nothing to be jealous of,” Elizabeth continues, “because we’re just friends.”

Rio sucks in a breath and scratches at his cheek. 

“Right?” Elizabeth presses.

“Right,” Rio confirms.

And then Rio sees him. He’s shoving some of his dumbass football buddies around, laughing, shouting and pointing at that Misty Rogers girl and Rio just shakes his head.

“You better go, then.”

“What?” Elizabeth asks, startled. 

Rio nods towards Dean. “Before he sees you gettin’ out of my car.”

She turns and spots her people making their way to Kyle Wallace's truck parked a few spaces down the row. “Oh.”

There’s a moment where they lock eyes. Then Rio looks forward, turns the key in the ignition just far enough that—shockingly—the radio starts up, but not the engine. 

“‘Bye then,” Elizabeth says awkwardly, unbuckling and popping open the door. “Um. Tutoring tomorrow?”

“Yep," Rio says, eyes razor-focused on his windshield. 

“Okay.”

And then the door clicks shut and she’s gone. 

_Fuck,_ he thinks, licking his teeth. He didn’t get _shit_ under control. 

And he knows, then, turning to look at Elizabeth’s empty seat, that Elena was right, that Vanessa was right, that _Esta_ was right. He _likes_ her.

Something red catches Rio’s eye on the floor of the passenger seat. He leans over and reaches his long arm out to grab it.

It’s Elizabeth’s bracelet, snapped in two. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unbeta'ed! Let me know if you capture anything glaring (I'm basically finishing it and instantly posting it, haha).


	6. Beth: Wednesday, Sept 29th [The Great Gatsby]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Dean's relationship fractures further; Beth lies to Ruby; Beth learns some new things about Rio; Dean asks for a favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Dean is emotionally manipulative and coercive about sex with Beth in the first scene.

**Wednesday, September 29th**

“Where’s your bracelet?”

“Huh?” Beth asks, stifling a yawn. 

It’s early, before school, and Beth’s leaning against Dean’s locker in the science wing. He’s got one hand by her head, propping up his weight. He takes his other hand and runs his clammy fingers over her bare wrist. 

“Your bracelet. You’re not wearing it again.”

Beth looks down, surprised to see that it isn’t there. She’s sure she put it on this morning… didn’t she? 

Last night, after she’d wriggled out of hanging out with Dean while his parents were out (his mom was at a PTA meeting and his dad was staying late at work again) she’d gone home, made chicken and dumplings for dinner, given Annie a bath, and worked on homework. Then, just before changing into her pajamas, she’d emptied her pockets, pulling out the _Rudy_ movie stub to tuck it carefully into her jewelry box. She’d put the bracelet in with it… right?

She frowns, uncertain. 

“I must have left it at home by accident.”

“You forgot to wear it?” 

Beth links her fingers with Dean’s, trying to calm him. “It just slipped my mind. It wasn’t, like, intentional or—”

“You’re not, like, mad at me or something, are you?” Dean asks, voice laced with worry, his face crumpled earnestly. “You’ve just been kinda weird lately and I don’t know if I _did_ something or—”

Beth feels her insides twist. She looks down, unable to meet his eye, thinking of the way her pulse had raced yesterday when Rio had grinned at her and said, _I already know you like me._

Beth shakes her head. “No, of course not.”

“Good,” Dean says, exhaling a sigh of relief. “It’s just last night you didn’t want to come over and—”

“Dean,” Beth says gently, squeezing his hand. “I have homework and chores, not to mention Annie and—”

“I know, but like—” He sighs. “I just wanna, you know… spend some special time with you.” 

Dean reaches and tucks her hair behind her ear, then kisses her lobe softly. Beth feels the flames of a blush burn at her face. 

“Dean,” she says, pushing gently at his chest. “We’re at school.”

All around them is the hum of other conversations, the sound of sneakers squeaking against the tile and lockers swinging open and slamming shut. Turning her head, Beth can see a boy sitting on the floor a few feet away tapping frantically at a Gameboy, a girl just beyond him smacking her gum and reading a Judy Blume book. 

“I know,” Dean says, pushing back against her hand to nuzzle his face into her neck. “It’s just… we’re never, you know… _alone._ ”

Beth feels goosebumps prickle across her skin and she freezes. “Dean.”

“Yeah, Bethie?” he husks.

“I’ve told you…” she whispers, trailing off, pulling away from him. 

“Yeah?” Dean asks distractedly, playing with her fingers.

“I’m not… you know. Ready. For that.” Beth swallows, daring to look up at him. 

She knows he did… _that_ … with his last girlfriend, Beckie Thompson. And she knows that most of his friends do it with _their_ girlfriends. Sometimes, when they’re all hanging out at lunch or at someone’s house, the boys go off together, and Beth gets stuck talking to Courtney and Stacey and Natalie and Misty and it comes up. Beth is forced to sit there silently, pretending she has any idea or even interest in what they’re talking about. 

She _knows_ they know that she and Dean haven’t done it yet, because Courtney told her once that Dean complained to Jeremy about how Beth gave him "blue balls." Beth had no idea what she was talking about, so she just laughed nervously until Misty scoffed, one brow arched in judgment, “That’s _not_ a good thing.” 

After, Beth had to ask Ruby what it meant, but Ruby didn’t know, either. Beth only learned when Dean told her himself one day when he’d been kissing her on top of his bed and Beth had stopped him from snaking his hand up her shirt.

“Well, we don’t have to jump _right_ to that,” Dean says soothingly, tipping up Beth’s chin with his knuckles. “There’s lots of things we can do, and I don’t know… I just thought… since we love each other…” 

Dean leans down to kiss her, capturing her mouth with his, only Beth feels her heart beating too fast, and her breath is stuck in her throat, and her skin feels too tight. She pulls away suddenly. “I don’t—”

Dean looks at her, confusion etched on his face. “What? What is it?”

Beth sucks in a breath, stepping aside from him, out from where his arm keeps her trapped between him and the locker, just—away.

“Bethie?”

The bell rings.

“I have to go to history,” Beth says, shaking herself off. “I’ll see you later.”

“But we’re good, right—?”

Beth disappears into the throng of passersby without answering.

* * *

“So,” Ruby says, dropping her backpack to the floor and sliding into her desk for third period Honors English. She pops her lips and clasps her hands together. “Just ran into Dean in the hallway.” 

She looks at Beth expectantly.

Beth jerks her head up from reviewing the last couple pages of the _Gatsby_ chapter she was supposed to read last night for homework. She’d skimmed it, but her mind had kept drifting—to thinking of Rio at the riverbank, skin golden brown from the sunlight refracting over the water—to remembering the cool darkness of the movie theater and the warmth of their elbows touching on the armrest—to contemplating the quiet stillness in his car when he’d asked her why she’d told Dean she was going to lunch with Ruby.

She’d felt so… mixed up, lying there in bed, staring blankly at the lines of text in front of her. She’d barely comprehended a single word. 

It was just—

Hanging out with Rio made her feel _good_ , but feeling good made her feel terrible—the guilt like a slow drip off a cave wall, forming a stalagmite of shame in the pit of her stomach.

She had a boyfriend—and not just any boyfriend, but _Dean Boland_ —a senior who was a star player on the football team, who cared whether she wore the bracelet he bought her, who put up with the number of times she’d had to cancel on him for Annie, who—more than anything—just wanted to spend _time_ with her. A boy who wanted to _marry_ her someday. Because he loved her. He’d told her that, and she believed him, and in some ways it felt like she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but in others… 

_But,_ she’d kept telling herself, _we’re just friends. Right? Right._

Over and over she’d repeated it, trying to chip away at the guilt—but somehow, it hadn’t made her feel any better.

Beth can feel Ruby’s impatience rolling off of her in waves. 

“Yeah?” Beth asks, trying to make herself sound casual, unbothered. It wasn’t like it was unusual for Dean to talk to Ruby, so there was no reason for her stomach to clench with worry. 

“Yup.” Ruby squints at Beth, like she _knows_ something. 

“Well. Cool.” Beth picks her book back up. She thinks she can finish the chapter if she just spends the next few minutes—

“He asked me how lunch was yesterday. _Apparently_ we ate together. Now, this is news to me, so… do you want to tell me something?”

Beth’s eyes widen. “Did you say anything?”

“Of course not,” Ruby scoffs. “I’m not stupid.”

Beth exhales. “Thanks.”

“So are you going to tell me what you were really doing at lunch or…?”

Beth feels her cheeks get warm. She tucks her hair behind her ear and looks at the door to the classroom, where a few more kids filter in, chattering and laughing as they make their way to their seats.

“I was… avoiding him,” Beth says, reaching for the first explanation that comes to her. She drops her voice to a whisper, so the few other kids across the room can’t hear her. “He’s trying to convince me to… go all the way again. I just wanted a break.”

It’s a good cover, she thinks, because Ruby was always happy to jump to the worst conclusions about Dean, and this subject, in particular, was a sore spot for her—Ruby was waiting until marriage. 

Beth feels a little bad, though—Dean had already come up to find her between history and chem and apologized profusely, promising her that he _does_ hear her and he _won’t_ keep bothering her about it—but still. Something about the way he’d told her he loved her this morning, the way it had felt like a trick… It gnaws at her. 

But Ruby just stares at Beth hard, like she’s waiting for more. Beth sits up a little straighter under the scrutiny, pushing her shoulders back. 

“Yeah, so… I just thought it’d be easier if I told him I was having lunch with you. Get some breathing room.”

“Uh huh. That makes sense,” Ruby says, but there’s an edge to her voice that lets Beth know that she doesn’t buy it.

“What?” Beth asks, scrunching her eyebrows, defensive.

“So who’d you eat lunch with, then? I mean, if you weren’t with Dean and you weren’t with me—”

“I have other friends,” Beth protests. 

“Yeah? Who?”

Beth glares at her. “Her name is… Esta.” 

“Okay,” Ruby says, jutting her lip out, shaking her head in disbelief. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”

“She’s a friend from AV Class,” Beth insists, digging her heels in. 

“Interesting. What’d you do in AV Class yesterday again?”

“What do you _mean_?” Beth asks, flustered. She can feel an angry blush creeping up her neck. “We did what we do every day.”

“Yeah?” Ruby fixes Beth with a _gotcha_ glare. “So why weren’t you on the morning announcements today?”

The words drop like a stone in still water. Beth feels doused. Gaping, Beth flails around for a response. “Well, it’s just—I—”

“Why are you lying to _me_?” Ruby asks, but it’s a not sharp reprimand—it’s a dull hurt. 

Beth looks down at her hands, shame-faced. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad,” Ruby clarifies. “It’s just—next time let me _know_ when I’m your cover story, okay? That way I’m not caught so off-guard. You’re lucky Dean’s an idiot.”

Beth laughs a little bit, but she knows she’s not supposed to think that’s funny. 

“Thanks, Ruby. You’re the best.”

“I know it,” Ruby says, rolling her eyes with a dismissive wave of the hand. “But really: where were you yesterday? You weren’t in Home Ec, either.”

Beth bites her lip. The classroom’s filling up—the bell will ring any minute now—and there’s a higher chance someone will overhear some _thing_. But Ruby’s looking at her expectantly, and Beth feels caught between feeling protective of the memory and wanting to speak it out loud, just to confirm that it was real—that someone like _her_ could experience a day like _that_. 

“I played hooky.” She glances at Ruby, reading the shock on her face. “With Rio.”

“Wow,” Ruby says, leaning back in her chair. She scratches at a raised eyebrow, pausing, like she’s tempering her reaction. Beth can see that she wants to ask a hundred questions, but she settles with just one. “What’d you guys do?”

Beth shrugs, fiddling with the pages of her book. “Just went to the movies.”

“But… why?”

It’s a good question, and one Beth doesn’t really know how to answer. She’d watched the clock dwindle down at Bandito’s and had the vaguest reluctance to get back in the car and go back to school like normal—and then, like a gift, Rio had presented her with the option of staying just a few minutes longer. She’d hesitated, but with her record, she knew she could finagle her way out of a tardy slip. So she’d nodded.

Only the slope had been slippery—one yes leading to another. _Yes_ , she would stay for some more empanadas. _Yes,_ she would be his accomplice, maybe because it would get her back to school faster, maybe because she knew he expected her to say _no_. _Yes,_ she would skip out on the rest of the day, she would let him drive her wherever he wanted, she would let him persuade her she’d earned half the profits for the drug deal, she would let him convince her to sneak into an R-rated movie... 

_Why_ , though?

 _Because_ , she thinks, reaching to her wrist to twist a bracelet that’s not there. _Because, because._

The one minute bell rings and Rio slinks through the door. He catches Beth’s eye immediately, nodding with only the smallest smirk, and Beth feels the invisible cord between them tighten. She can’t help it. She smiles at him. 

Catching the interaction, Ruby shakes her head. “What’d you tell Dean when he asked why you weren’t on the morning announcements?”

Beth turns back towards Ruby, frowning. 

“He didn’t ask.” She knows instinctively it’s not because he was too busy apologizing—it was because he didn’t even notice. She _should_ feel relieved—but she can’t help feeling a little stung, too. 

“Like I said.” 

Beth looks at her questioningly. 

“You’re lucky he’s an idiot.”

* * *

“I mean, it’s hard to have sympathy for her,” Jamie Maynard argues, holding up her copy of _Gatsby_. “She’s kind of dumb—really shallow and vapid.”

Beth pinches her eyebrows, disagreeing. 

The class was having a discussion on whether Daisy Buchanan—the titular character’s married love interest—was sympathetic, and the consensus was overwhelmingly _no._ But despite everyone else’s interpretation of her, Beth knew Daisy wasn’t _stupid—_ the fact that she _wanted_ her daughter to be a fool indicated that she wasn’t—it showed just how much she understood the cost of being a smart woman in that world. 

“Mmm,” Ms. Patel says, perched on her stool at the front of the room, one foot tucked under the other leg. It’s her non-commital response, the one she does when she wants to wait and see how the conversation cracks open. “Melanie, you’ve got a look on your face like maybe you agree—what do you think?”

“I mean, I kind of see her point?” Melanie says, voice pitching up at the end as she fixes her frizzy blonde ponytail. “Daisy _knew_ she loved Gatsby, and she even got that letter from him just before the wedding, but she _chose_ to marry Tom anyway—even though she was, like, crying and wigging out and acting like she wanted them to give the pearls back? Like, she just took a bath and then married him like it was no big deal.”

“Yeah,” Shane Breeler adds, not waiting to be called on. “Like, Tom sucks, right? He’s got a mistress and he’s racist—“

 _And he beats women up,_ Beth thinks, remembering the scene where Tom broke Myrtle's nose. 

“—but Daisy stays with him so it’s kind of her fault—”

Beth huffs. It figures someone like Shane Breeler would think that—he’d cheated on his last two girlfriends and then had a total screaming match meltdown in the cafeteria because his last girlfriend _dared_ to hang out with another boy—a boy she’d been friends with for _five years._

“Interesting, Shane, but I’d like you to raise your hand—” Ms. Patel chastises, holding up a hand to silence him. Shane throws his arm up as if to continue speaking, but Ms. Patel has already turned away from him, ignoring him. “You’ve been quiet, Carrie. What do you think?”

“I think Daisy and Gatsby are going to have an affair.” There are nods of agreement from other students. “And I think Tom is going to freak out.”

“Well, duh,” Shane calls out. “I would, too.”

“Really, Shane?” Ms. Patel presses. “Would that be a fair reaction?” 

Ms. Patel gazes around the room, looking for someone to call on. She leans back on her stool, tries to make eye contact with the kids desperate not to be noticed, tries to find someone she hasn’t heard from in a while—

“Beth, you’re shaking your head. What do you think?”

“I mean,” Beth says, looking around at everyone uncertainly. “No offense, but I kind of… disagree with all of that.”

“Really? Say more,” Ms. Patel presses, pushing her thick black glasses up her nose. “Do you like Daisy, Beth?”

Beth can feel everyone’s eyes on her, and it’s not like she’s not comfortable sharing her opinion in class—it’s just. She can feel _Rio’s_ eyes on her, too, bright and black. 

Beth shrugs. 

“I don’t know that I _like_ her—but I can sympathize with her, I guess, even if she’s not very likable.” Ms. Patel nods, encouraging. “I just think we’re being a bit harsh and maybe forgetting some context? Like, it’s the 1920s, right? And there are all these expectations put on her. Daisy’s not _supposed_ to end up with a guy like Gatsby—not when he was poor, and not even now, when he’s ‘new money.’ She was supposed to marry a guy like Tom—so she did. And she might regret it and yeah, maybe she doesn’t love him but… she doesn’t really have a lot of choice, either. What’s she supposed to do?”

There’s a pause as people take this in—a few shrugging, conceding she has a point, while others roll their eyes. 

Ms. Patel smiles, about to jump off from Beth’s points when Christa Maak interrupts. “She could divorce him? I mean, just because he’s cheating on her—that doesn’t make it okay for her to do it back.”

“Yeah, but it’s the 1920s,” Beth says again, almost under her breath, drumming her fingers against her desk irritably. “Divorce wasn’t even an option.”

“Like I said,” Melanie says, “she should’ve called off the wedding in the first place.”

“Nah.”

Beth looks up in shock, because _Rio_ has just joined the conversation. 

Because he’s almost never in class, and because he never participates when he _does_ show up, when Ms. Patel swings her gaze over to Rio, there is a mixture of surprise and intrigue on her face. She doesn’t even reprimand him for calling out. “Would you like to jump in, Christopher?” 

Two rows over, Beth can hear Shane grumble under his breath about double standards.

Slouched in his seat, Rio runs his tongue along his teeth, like he’s not quite sure he really wants to join in the discussion. He glances over at Beth, though, and maybe he catches the way she’s leaned slightly forward in her seat because he looks back to Ms. Patel and says, “Sure.”

“What do you think of Daisy? Is she—like Jamie and Melanie suggest—just vapid and shallow? Or is she more than that?”

“She’s definitely shallow,” Rio concedes, and Beth’s mouth twists, disappointed. “But that’s just because she’s frontin’.”

Beth perks up.

“Fronting?” 

“Yeah, like a mask,” Rio explains, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. “I think she’s just tryin’ to survive. Daisy’s smart, she’s just pretending. That’s why she wants her daughter to be a fool or whatever. She knows her life sucks but she knows there’s nothin’ she can do about it. Might as well be rich and pretty while she can. At least it’s somethin’.”

“Interesting,” Ms. Patel says, tugging her cardigan closed and couching her chin in her hand. “So what you’re saying is that Daisy puts up with the bad because she gets something out of it—in this case, money?”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t that _make_ her shallow, though?” Ms. Patel challenges. “Materialistic?”

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Rio says, shaking his head. “Just makes her human. Money is power, and she ain’t got none of that. This way, she gets to pretend.”

Ms. Patel juts her lip out, considering his point. “I think that’s an interesting way to look at it. I’d like you all to find your elbow partner and discuss whether you think Christopher is right—is Daisy a survivor? Are her decisions shaped around her attempts to gain power in a world where she has none?”

The class breaks out into a low babble. 

Beth can feel Ruby’s eyes on her, and she knows she should turn to her, knows she should follow Ms. Patel’s instruction and discuss the question. But she finds herself staring at Rio, transfixed. She can’t help it, not just because he was on her side, or because he saw Daisy like she did, but because—

Because he’d gone home yesterday after everything and he’d _read the book._

* * *

He’s in math again, too. 

It’s weird—it’s like, a week and a half ago he was a person she barely knew existed, a boy who she’d only ever paid attention to because his reappearance signaled that there was a quiz. She’d come to associate seeing him with a sense of dread, his presence a threat to her ever-dropping grade. 

Now Rio’s everywhere—he’s in the hallway in the morning, he’s showing up to his classes during the day, he’s in the library with her after school. He’s even in her thoughts, too, when they get away from her...

Like now. 

Since the lesson had finished early, Mr. Stewart had given the class the last ten minutes to start on their homework. He was pacing up and down the aisles, hands clasped behind his back, peering over kids’ shoulders to see if they were working out the problems correctly.

But Beth wasn’t paying attention to that. 

Mr. Stewart clears his throat. “Focus, Ms. Marks.”

Beth blinks, looking up at him standing over her. She hadn’t noticed he’d made it over to her row—she still thought he was with the Q’s and R’s. 

“More math, less… daydreaming, hm?”

She flushes. She hadn’t even realized she’d been staring at Rio across the rows, at the way he was doing that thing he did with his pencil when he was deep in thought, pushing the eraser into his bottom lip while he looked over his work. 

Nervously, she glances a few rows past Rio over at Dean. She sees that he’s completely turned around in his chair, entranced in a conversation with Charley Booth—most likely about last night’s practice or the upcoming game—completely oblivious. 

Beth looks up again, sheepish. “Oh—um. Sorry, Mr. Stewart.”

Mr. Stewart gives her a toothless smile, half disappointed at her inattention, half-amused, and then he shuffles off to help Lyle Tate, who has his hand raised.

“Maybe you should stare at your _own_ boyfriend.”

Beth startles.

Christa Maak is turned around in her seat, eyes squinted in a glare.

“What?”

Christa Maak hasn’t said anything to Beth all year besides “Can I borrow a sheet of paper?” and “Did we have homework due today?” once or twice, _maybe,_ so Beth feels like a gust of wind has gone straight through her, the interaction is so strange and unexpected. 

“You heard me,” Christa says, flouncing her brown curls. 

Beth’s lips fall open. “I have _no_ idea what you’re talking about.” 

Christa scoffs, leveling Beth with a look that suggests Christa thinks Beth knows _exactly_ what she’s talking about. 

Trying to get a grasp on whatever conversation she now seemed to be in the middle of, Beth feels a sinking feeling in her stomach as her mind darts from explanation to explanation— _Was Christa friends with Dean and Beth just didn’t know? Was Christa going to tell him that she’d been staring at Rio? Was it possible that Christa had a crush on Dean? Was she going to try and steal him? Is Christa just such a good person that she felt the need to tell Beth—to her face—she knew what kinds of thoughts were running through her head about the wrong boy—_

“He has a girlfriend, you know.”

The room suddenly feels too warm, the combination of the sun slanting through the window and the mist of sweat from 25 teenagers mingling. Beth feels heat lick up her neck in the thick air so that she tugs on her collar.

“Who?” she asks, trying to play dumb, trying to act like she doesn’t know who Christa thinks they’re talking about at all—that she wasn’t staring at Rio—that he’s not the subject of their conversation—

But then Christa says, “He’s dating Dylan Ortiz.”

A lined piece of paper, unfolded from a complicated series of tabs and pulls, flashes in Beth’s mind. Rio’s note. 

_-D._

She’d wondered who D was—until somehow she hadn’t even remembered that she’d ever existed in the first place.

“I know you’re like, ‘pro-cheating’ or whatever,” Christa says, using her long, painted pink nails to make mock air quotes, “but you’re not Daisy Buchanan—”

“—That’s not what I meant,” Beth interjects weakly.

“—so don’t think you can get away with it because at _best_ you’re Myrtle _,_ ” Christa spits—referring to Tom’s trashy mistress—“and she _dies_ at the end.”

The insult—sandwiched by a deliberate misinterpretation and a spoiler—feels like a slap in the face. 

“Leave me alone,” Beth huffs, because there’s nothing else she can fathom saying right now—no defense that will sound authentic, no lie that she could concoct when the rug has been pulled out of her this hard—

Christa leans closer to Beth, her whisper sharp glass in Beth’s ear. “Leave _him_ alone.”

And Beth feels such a strange mixture of possession and shame that she quickly averts her eye, caught between telling Christa off and apologizing. 

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Beth says instead, turning back to Christa slowly, voice calmer than she feels. 

Christa just laughs.

* * *

The loop of Beth’s conversation with Christa is recorded over her memories of the empanadas and the riverbank and the movie theater. During teacher’s lectures the audio plays, a dull static in the basement of Beth’s mind, but when Beth gets her thoughts back to herself—during bathroom breaks, during passing period, for the entirety of her fifth period office TA because the ladies “don’t need much doing today, dear”—it’s in surround sound, a crisp clear picture in technicolor.

 _He’s dating Dylan Ortiz_.

Beth’s seen her before—they were in the same health class last year. She remembers Dylan was a pretty black girl, slim and sharp-edged, both her features and her personality. She wasn’t needlessly cruel, no, but she wasn’t warm, wasn’t approachable—she was prone to be on the defensive and to make jokes accidentally meaner than she’d intended. She was… intimidating. She projected confidence, she was effortlessly cool. 

She was the kind of girl it made sense for Rio to like, more sense than—

Well. 

Beth goes crazy, anyway, during her TA period. On a whim, she looks up Dylan’s locker combo, memorizes it easily, and slips out into the hallway. Only by the time she actually makes it to the math wing, she’s mortified that she’d even gotten that far, and she scurries back to the office, heart thumping. 

What was she _thinking_?

(She was thinking Dylan might have a note from Rio).

In Home Ec, Elena Trujillo tries to compliment Beth on her cornflake-breaded chicken nuggets—a simple recipe, too easy for Beth’s skills, something she can just go through the motions with—and Beth remembers how she’d asked Rio if he talked about her, how he’d avoided answering. It makes her mad, suddenly, that he would have a girlfriend and talk to her like he does—swinging from honeyed words to dirty innuendo to pointed silences. She tells Elena thanks, but then she turns away suddenly, shutting down Elena’s attempt to continue the conversation. 

In AV class, Beth flubs all her lines. Mr. Bailey gets so exasperated with her that he eventually gives up, snapping that they don’t have time for more mistakes. They shoot the scenes with Lacey Billings instead, cutting the entire Homecoming announcement reminder because they don’t have time to shoot it and edit it without AV Club staying late after school.

“This better not impact ticket sales,” Tabatha Quinn, the ASB Treasurer, says snidely.

Beth doesn’t answer her. 

By the time the final bell rings, she’s gone back and forth a hundred times: go to tutoring or skip? Face Rio or avoid him?

She goes.

(Why? Because… _because_. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t have a reason).

* * *

 _Strictly business,_ Beth decides. 

He’s her tutor, and that’s what their relationship is. That’s the most important thing. She needs to get her grade up, and he can help her get back on track, and when that happens—when she’s up to a C-average—no, she thinks immediately, gut twisting—a B-average would be better, even though it’ll take longer—it’ll be better for college—

Well. When that happens, they can go their separate ways. Back to their normal lives. 

“Yo.”

Rio flips the library chair around to drop into it backward, his chest leaning against the back of the seat, his arms folded over the top, chin perched on his wrists.

Beth stiffens. “Hello.” 

She has her book and her paper arranged perfectly in front of her, parallel to each other, her name already carefully written in the corner, the first three problems completed from her time in class.

Rio peers at her curiously, reading the tension rolling off of her. “You good?”

“Can you quickly double-check these answers with yours?” Beth pushes the paper towards him. “I want to know if I’m doing it right.”

Rio’s gaze lingers on her, like he noticed she didn’t answer. 

“Can you?” Beth asks again, voice sharper this time.

“I haven't started the homework yet.”

“Well, then what were you doing in class? I saw you writing something.”

She regrets the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth. If he tells her he was writing a note to his girlfriend—

“You watchin’ me, huh?” Rio props his cheek in his hand, smiling smugly. 

Beth jerks her chin. “No.”

Rio’s eyes sparkle. 

“I was drawing.”

Beth twitches toward him. It’s nearly imperceptible.

“You draw?” She tries to sound disinterested, like this information means nothing to her. Like she’s asking merely to be polite.

“Yep.”

But she’s playing the game with the wrong person. He was perfectly content to let people wonder about him. 

She manages, just barely, not to ask him what he was drawing. 

“Neat.”

Rio slides his hand over his mouth, hiding an amused smile. “Wanna see it?” 

He asks it like he knows she does.

Beth considers him for a second. “Only if you want to show me.”

She’s made her move on the chessboard, and it’s a stalemate now. He knows she wants to see it, but now he can’t show it to her without admitting he wants her to see it, too. Rio’s jaw shifts so that his mouth is a little crooked, annoyed. He gives up the game.

“Think number 3 is wrong,” Rio says, pulling the paper closer. “Looks like you got distracted on step 4—’cause I know you know 11 plus 6 is 17.” 

Beth blushes at making such a stupid mistake, but she squares her shoulders and just says, “Alright. I’ll fix it.” 

“So you get in trouble for playin’ hooky?” Rio asks nonchalantly, shifting so that his elbows are on her paper, blocking her from taking it back. “Get grounded from the phone for a week? Have to cancel date night with the boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Nice,” Rio says too quickly. Beth peers at him. “How’d you slip out of that?”

 _Someone would have to notice first,_ Beth thinks. She hadn’t even _seen_ her mother yesterday, let alone talked to her. She’d heard her vomiting in the bathroom sometime around one in the morning, drunk, the retches echoing off the cracking tiled walls—but that was the closest they had gotten to interacting.

“How do _you_ get away with it?” Beth asks, turning the question around on him. “Your parents must get phone calls every day.”

“They work late a lot. Not all of us got Mrs. Cleaver for a mom.”

It’s a simple comment, an easy assumption, a logical guess based on—well, everything Beth tried to project to the world. But Beth’s face falls a little anyway, and she feels a burn in her eyes. 

“Right.”

Rio studies her, and she blinks a few times before the wetness in her eyes can spill over. He leans forward a bit, almost like he recognizes, opens his mouth like he’s going to say something—

And then the library doors slam open and Dean comes barreling in with his friend Jeremy, a fellow football player with a squashed face that’s a few inches shorter and a few pounds heavier than Dean. There’s a loud crash as the doors fall back into place, and Ms. Colte flinches at her librarian’s desk, lips pursed as she watches Dean and Jeremy cross the carpeted floor over to Beth and Rio’s table.

“Hey,” Dean says, leaning down to kiss Beth on the cheek.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

Dean ignores the question to turn toward Rio, who nods tightly at him. “We’re here for you, actually.”

“‘Sup, man?” Jeremy asks, holding out a fist. 

Rio’s shoulders are tight, but he gives Jeremy a fist bump. “What’s good?”

“We were wondering if we could get some party favors for after Homecoming,” Dean says, dropping his voice and looking over at Ms. Colte typing away on her computer. 

Rio glances at Beth, who rearranges her features to look indifferent. 

“Prolly,” Rio agrees. “Depends whatchu want.”

“Like a keg and—”

“Not just a keg, man. We wanna party before Homecoming too—in the limo,” Jeremy reminds Dean.

“Oh, right.”

Although he’s turned towards the boys, face even tilted up at them, Rio’s eyes remain on Beth the entire time that Dean and Jeremy go back and forth discussing how many cases they might want, what type of keg would be best, how many ounces of weed would be necessary for everyone they plan to invite to the afterparty at Jeremy’s parents’ house—which will be empty, apparently, since they’ll be on vacation in Cancún. 

The conversation comes on so suddenly, so unexpectedly—with Beth as a forgotten witness rather than an active participant—that it makes her freeze, rigid. 

“I think it just depends on who is willing to pitch in, because between the limo and the stuff—” Jeremy nods here to Rio, “—it’s gonna add up, you know?”

“Think you’ll be able to pitch in, Bethie?”

All three boys look at her—Dean and Jeremy expectantly, Rio with a quiet, stoic curiosity.

“What?” Beth asks blankly.

“With a limo? For Homecoming? Can you pitch in some cash?”

Blood rushes through Beth’s ears. She feels faraway, lost, like some invisible barrier separates her from them. Dean looks at her expectantly, waiting for an answer. 

“I... didn’t know we were going to Homecoming,” Beth says slowly.

“What do you mean? Of course we are.”

“It’s just... you never asked.” 

Rio rubs at his chin, while Jeremy lets out a low whistle, looking up at the ceiling. “Oh, god. Here we go.”

Beth’s jaw locks. Sometimes she really hates Jeremy. He’s always making digs about Beth being a sophomore, or implying that she’s dramatic, or treating her like she’s too naive to know anything about what they’re talking about.

She’d been wanting to go, of course—and she knows it’s a bit silly to feel hurt that Dean hadn’t been planning on some special way to ask her—but the entire thing is mortifying now, being shoved in the middle of Dean asking her for money she doesn’t have, sprung on her in the middle of his attempts at brokering a drug deal, taking place in front of _Rio._

“I didn’t know I had to…” Dean says, confusion etched on his face. “I mean, you’re my girlfriend…?”

“I know, it’s just—” Beth exhales sharply, then looks around at this gaggle of boys: Dean, baffled; Jeremy, exasperated; Rio, unreadable. She knows that they will never understand the way she’s feeling—because teenage boys were dumb and refused to consider the way that girls felt, for one, but also because none of them could possibly imagine what was like to have budgeted stolen money so carefully that she used the last of it to buy her little sister a secondhand Halloween costume a month early, just because she knew there would be nothing left if she waited. 

She was already stressing about scrounging up enough cash to find a suitable dress from Goodwill—now she had to pitch in for a limo she didn’t even want? 

But how can she ever say it? How could she ever tell a single soul and not have them look at her differently—like she’s a person to be _pitied_?

“It’s just what?” Dean asks when Beth doesn’t finish her thought.

“Nothing.” Beth shakes her head. She reaches to slide her homework assignment back in front of her from its place in front of Rio. She can feel the prickle of tears coming on again, and she looks down, begins frantically erasing the error she made on question number three. She presses too hard, hard enough that there’s a pile of eraser shavings leftover on her sheet when she’s done. “It’s fine. I can pitch in some money.”

She swipes furiously at the bits of eraser, pushing the debris to the floor. 

There’s a pause and Beth knows that the boys are looking at each other, trying to decipher her, trying to figure out a way to react to her. 

They must not come up with anything, though, because the next words aren’t directed to Beth at all. 

“So… uh. You can hook us up?” Dean asks Rio awkwardly.

Rio doesn’t answer immediately. Then he nods, the muscle in his jaw jumping. 

“Do you think there’s any way to get, like, a discount? Since we’re getting so much stuff this time?”

Shifting in her seat, Beth tries not to feel uncomfortable by the stretch of silence.

Then: “Yeah, I could cut you a deal.” 

Dean lets out a breath mingled with a nervous chuckle. “Sweet.”

Beth glances at Rio, briefly surprised that he would offer Dean this kindness. It’s so unusual that for a second, she wonders if somehow it has something to do with _her._

Then Rio says smoothly, “I want an invite to the party, though.”

And when Beth looks up at him properly, he gives her a look that leaves her with no doubt—that _does_ have something to do with her.

But what?

* * *

Digging her keys out of her backpack, Beth climbs up the concrete steps to her apartment. In a lot of ways, she’s gotten used to living here now—from the faded yellow paint of the building to the way some of the numbers on the doors hang askew. She chats with the elementary kids who kick a soccer ball around on the black asphalt of the parking lot, and she volunteers to get Mrs. Karpinski’s mail because she’s learned the old woman’s knees are bad. She nods at the nameless neighbors who smoke cigarettes on the steps. 

It’s fine, all things considering—until she has to put the key in the lock and go inside her stale, empty house.

When the door swings open, Annie turns away from giving her rapt attention to _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ to look at Beth. She's illuminated by the glow of the TV screen and nothing else and she’s perched, like usual, on the back of the couch in the way that Beth hates.

“Careful,” Beth tells her, because she’s just waiting for the day when Annie falls over backwards and breaks a wrist—or worse. “Get down on the cushions, okay?”

Annie scowls, crossing her arms.

“She’s fine.” 

In the kitchen, Beth’s mother, Debbie, is up and about. She shoves something into the microwave, pounds a couple of buttons, and then turns towards Beth.

“She could fall.”

“She’s careful,” Debbie retorts.

It’s just about the most inaccurate thing anyone has ever said about Annie, but Beth holds her tongue. She tries to read the energy in the room—there’s nothing immediately amiss. Her mother seems tired, maybe hungover, but not drunk. Beth carefully sets her backpack down in her room and then comes out to sit at the kitchen table. 

“How was your day?” her mother asks as the microwave whirs.

“Fine,” Beth says noncommittally. 

“Good.”

Beth nods. 

There’s a burst of laughter from Annie in the living room. The microwave beeps. 

“Cupboards are pretty full. How’d you get all this food?” Debbie asks, blowing the steam off a bite of leftover chicken and dumplings. 

“I did some errands for a few of the neighbors. Got a little bit of money.”

Debbie nods, not bothered enough to press and crack through the delicate glass of Beth’s lie—that the neighbors didn’t have anything to spare, that this was more than a bit of money’s worth of groceries. Then again, Debbie didn’t have a clear conception of just how much food Beth had purchased. Most of the dry goods were hidden under Beth’s bed so that she could ration them out between her and Annie without worrying that her mother would eat through the bags of ramen and the cans of spaghettios while she sat at home, too exhausted to make it to the grocery store or to cook a proper meal. 

Debbie sits down across from Beth and begins eating. Back before, before Beth ever had an idea that her life would end up like this, she was often told she looked exactly like her mother. They had the same strawberry blonde curls, the same wide blue eyes. It was always a compliment. 

Now Beth looks at Debbie and hopes she never hears the comparison again. Her mother’s hair hangs limp and dirty around her face, falling out of a half-hearted attempt at a ponytail. There are bags under her eyes and her face is always a bit bloated and red, like she wears a permanent blush. 

“Well, thanks for cooking dinner last night,” Debbie says, almost uncomfortable, noticing the way Beth’s eyeing her. 

“Oh. You’re welcome.” It’s weird to be thanked for something she does every night—but then, most of the time, Beth only had enough food to prepare just enough. There usually weren't leftovers for Debbie to scavenge. 

“You’re turning out to be a pretty good cook.”

Not long ago, Beth was hungry for her mother to see her, to recognize her, to care at all about… well, anything. And she thought she was over that—she thought she was used to being forgotten. But the compliment cracks something inside of Beth, the part of her that she keeps trying to shove down, the part that still _wants._

“Thank you,” Beth whispers.

Debbie smiles softly, and Beth sees a flicker of the mom she used to be.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?” Debbie uses her fork to cut through a piece of chicken, then loads up a bite with everything—dumpling, meat, carrots, peas.

“Um, it’s just—” Beth glances back at Annie, who has slid down into the couch cushions by this point, so that Beth can only just see her blonde hair peeking up over the back of the couch. “I was wondering…”

“Yeah?”

“Homecoming is coming up.”

Debbie stiffens. “Oh?”

“Yeah, and… my boyfriend and his friends… they’re getting a limo.”

“That sounds nice,” Debbie allows.

“Yeah. It’s just… they were wondering if, um, I might be able to help with some of the cost? There’s going to be a bunch of us, so it’ll be split all the ways—but…” 

Beth can’t force herself to look up. She can’t see the look on her mom’s face when she says _no._ But she has to ask, because it’s almost the first of the month, because money should be coming in, because she doesn’t know what else to _do._

Debbie purses her lips. “How much?”

“It’s fifty dollars,” Beth says quietly. That doesn’t include the dress or the shoes or the dinner or anything else, but she’ll figure out a solution to that problem later, she thinks. It’s just that limo money has to be _soon._

Debbie’s silent for so long that Beth looks up to try and gauge her reaction. But Debbie’s face is blank, impenetrable.

“Maybe you can ask if the neighbors need help with more errands.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s a good idea,” Beth says softly, nodding. 

Debbie stands up. “I’m going to finish eating in my room.”

Beth doesn’t move from the kitchen table, at least not until Annie complains about being hungry, too, and then Beth does what she does every night: she gets up and prepares dinner. 

* * *

The shadows cast by the glow of the streetlight outside Beth’s bedroom window make strange shapes in the popcorn ceiling. She should be asleep, but she’s not. She doesn’t toss, doesn’t turn. She just stares, wide-eyed, at the spot above the pillow, repeating the day in her head. 

She doesn’t know how to fit together the puzzle pieces of Christa snarling at her and Rio negotiating an invite to the party. Maybe he just wanted to bring his girlfriend, she rationalizes, knot in her gut—except why had he looked at her like _that,_ like… like—she doesn’t even know. 

Nobody has ever looked at her the way that Rio does. Like he both sees her and like he’s hungry to pull her apart to see what he can find inside. 

Could he really have a girlfriend and look at her like that? 

_Yes_ , she whispers to herself. Because she knows first-hand that it’s possible. 

She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling the burn of humiliation. 

How had everything gotten so mixed up?

She had been a spectacle in that library—from acting like a princess because her boyfriend hadn’t thought to ask her to the dance to acting like she was incapable of speech when Dean had asked her for the money. 

Had they realized? Pieced it together? Figured out her secret?

Her eyes sting. She thinks of her mother disappearing behind her bedroom door, swallowed up. 

Beth blinks and a single tear slides down her cheek. 

_No,_ Beth thinks to herself.

She won’t wallow in the bath, she won’t give the pearls back.

She has no choice. She will do what needs to be done. 

Her fingers had twitched, wanting, when she'd watched Dean pass a wad of money—a down payment—over to Rio, sliding it across the table right in front of her face. 

_Will Rio keep it in his locker?_ she wonders. 

And how easy would it be to steal?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to maggielawson and captainallthingspurpleme for collab'ing and beta'ing on this chapter and the next few!  
> Also many glitter bombs for all the people that helped me with ideas including pynkhues & mego42 and probably some others because I feel like I can't shut up about this story? You're all the best <3


	7. Rio: Wednesday, Sept 29th-Friday, October 1st [Carlos confrontation]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pressure mounts on all sides for Rio to dump Dylan and confess his feelings. Rio feels conflicted about what he wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW Homophobia: In the last library scene (when Beth studies Rio's face), Dean uses the word "gay" pejoratively when they discuss Beth shopping for Homecoming dresses.

**Wednesday, September 29th**

“Are you… reading?”

From his spot stretched out on the couch, Rio peeks over his book at Vanessa, home from a shift at McDonald’s, kicking off her shoes in the cramped foyer. 

“I read,” Rio says petulantly. 

“Yeah, books about people that go on road trips and do a bunch of drugs,” Vanessa mocks. “And weird books about, like, Greek mythology and dictators.”

Rio scowls. “Whatever.” 

“Is that _The Great Gatsby_?” Vanessa shrugs out of her coat and hangs it on top of their mother’s on the hooks behind the door. “Is that for _school?_ ”

Rio gives a short nod, then tries to return to reading, scanning the page to find the paragraph where he left off. 

“You’re doing… homework?” 

Vanessa maneuvers into the living room, stepping over toys their sisters have left out and collapsing onto the dated orange armchair in the corner opposite him. She looks exhausted, her uniform unkempt and covered in grease stains. 

“Yep.” Rio licks his thumb and turns the page.

“Okay, who _are_ you? Suddenly you’re tutoring, you have your first crush, _and_ you’re doing homework all in the span of two weeks?”

“You’re the one that said I had to go to school every day,” Rio grumbles, pretending to blame her for his new behaviors.

Vanessa cocks an eyebrow. “And now you’re actually listening to me? Are you sure you haven’t been abducted by aliens?”

“Nah. Turns out English class is just fuckin’ boring if you haven’t read the book.”

He can feel studying him, trying to figure out how honest he’s being. 

“Plus, I like arguin’,” Rio adds offhandedly (a justification he knows Vanessa can buy, considering he’s always doing it with her) but the image of Elizabeth looking all pleased when he’d jumped into the class discussion to back her up makes him readjust and scratch his ear. 

“Uh huh.”

Through the thick stucco wall separating the living room and the kitchen, Rio can hear the dull sounds of their mother puttering around as he and Vanessa sit in silence, Rio reading and Vanessa mulling as she absently picks the leaves off of their mother’s potted ficus. 

“I caught that, you know,” Vanessa says idly, twirling a stem in her hand. 

Rio grunts in question. The sound of a tea kettle whistles from the stovetop. 

“How you didn’t deny that you had a crush.”

Bristling, Rio stares doggedly at the page of his book, trying very hard to focus on Gatsby’s obsession with getting Nick’s grass cut.

“So how was your li’l lunch?” Vanessa pries. He’d lucked out yesterday—she’d gotten roped into pulling a double shift and he hadn’t seen her before he’d gone to bed, so she hadn’t had the chance to interrogate him then. 

“Fine,” Rio says shortly, voice flat, giving her nothing. 

“I’m guessing her boyfriend didn’t find out?” Rio glances over at her. “I mean, your face is still pretty.”

Scowling, Rio feels a flicker of annoyance. It was laughable for Vanessa to suggest that in a fight, Dean Boland would ever get enough of an advantage over Rio to be able to do damage to Rio’s face. Rio was stronger, quicker, more agile—Dean, blundering and ungainly. He was always crashing into the library, letting doors slam behind him, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t the only person in the room. 

Rio’s temper ignites more when he remembers how yesterday he’d been on the precipice of getting Elizabeth to let slip something about her family before Dean ruined it. Rio had snarked that he wasn’t as lucky as her—he didn’t have Mrs. Cleaver at home—and Elizabeth’s face had fallen. For the first time, Rio wondered if he was mistaken. Maybe he’d been imagining the wrong kind of perfection. Maybe Elizabeth’s mom was one of those Stepford types bent on eradicating all flaws and presenting the right “image.” It tracked—Elizabeth was wound tight and put a lot much pressure on herself, plus Rio hasn’t forgotten the way she’d reacted to the idea of someone like him tutoring someone like her—but before he could finish deciphering the expression on her face, Dean had barreled into the moment and pressed a sloppy kiss to Elizabeth’s cheek, leaving behind a smudge of saliva. Distracted, Rio missed Elizabeth pulling down her mask, and when he met her eye again, she was unreadable. 

(God. And Rio had given the guy a _deal_ after that, trading in the lost income for an invite to a party with people he hated because Dean’s sudden appearance and theft of Elizabeth’s attention had made Rio crave an opportunity to return the favor—to encroach on _Dean’s_ space and steal Elizabeth’s gaze and watch as she got all squirmy, caught between the two of them). 

“Do you know if she likes you?” Vanessa asks, interrupting his meandering thoughts. 

Turning the page, Rio tries to read on about Gatsby filling an entire room of Nick’s house with flowers to prepare for Daisy to come over. It feels like a bit of overkill, but Rio figures Gatsby has only established himself as a bit of a crackpot thus far, so it’s not exactly a surprise, either. 

“Does _she_ know that you like _her_?” 

The way Elizabeth had looked him at him? She’d gone through a flurry of emotions—jumping from confusion to surprise to annoyance to smug recognition in the span of about three seconds. She understood _exactly_ why he’d asked for an invite to that party. But just because she knew, it didn’t mean—

“Who?”

Rio freezes.

Catlike, his mother’s narrow frame has silently slipped into the room. She sets a cup of tea on the coffee table for Rio, nudging it closer, and then she sits on the blue armchair opposite Vanessa, setting her own tea down on a side table cluttered with mismatched framed photos of all the kids over the years.

“Rio’s got a _crush_ ,” Vanessa spills, gleeful. “Isn’t that cute? Baby is growing up.”

“Don’t call me that,” Rio snaps, ears burning red, but Vanessa just grins wickedly. As a toddler, she had christened him Baby when their parents brought him home from the hospital, and she had never quite grown out of it—not even after he became the middle child, or even the second oldest. Now she used it to spite him.

“A crush? ¿De verdad?”

Rio groans. Calling it a crush made him feel like a kid.

And anyway, it wasn’t a _crush_ —it was—well, he doesn’t know, exactly, but it wasn’t so childish as that. Not that it was a big deal, either—it was just—

 _It’s its own thing,_ he decides. 

“Sí,” Vanessa answers. “He took her out to lunch.”

Rio lowers the book and glares at her over the spine. She was such a snitch. 

“¿Esa chica que te llama todo el tiempo?” His mother imitates the sound of the phone ringing, pretending to be overwhelmed by the incessant calls and picking up two different receivers. “Dylan? Are you finally bringing her over to meet us?”

Rio rolls his neck, the tension pulled taut in his muscles. “Nah.”

Cocking an eyebrow, his mother grabs her tea and takes a sip. “No? What happened to her?”

“Nothin’.” Rio turns the page. 

He’d waited all day for Dylan to say something to him, to confront him on what Christa Maak must’ve overheard, but at school she’d been perfectly normal, yammering on about some drama or other (Rio had found it hard to pay attention) before she’d suggested they go see _Dazed and Confused_ this weekend. He’d been noncommittal, not about to admit he’d already seen it. 

Rio thinks about Elizabeth’s elbow touching his on that armrest—

“It’s some girl he tutors.”

“Can you just—?” Rio inhales sharply, annoyed. 

“¿Eres un tutor? Since when?”

“Mamá, that is so _not_ the point right now,” Vanessa says, waving her hand as if moving her mother along in the conversation. 

“Pero estoy confundida.” Lower lip jutted in confusion, his mom presses, “So then what about this Dylan girl?”

Rio runs his tongue along his teeth, ignoring his mother’s question. He’d thought about telling Dylan he couldn’t hang out with her anymore, but it felt weird. It wasn’t like he and Elizabeth were a _thing_ , and it wasn’t like he’d ever led Dylan to believe that he wanted to be more than what they were, so why couldn’t he just keep doing what he was doing? Elizabeth had a _boyfriend._ Liking her was no reason for Rio to do anything different. He wasn’t gonna sit around and wait for her like some sort of— 

“Hello? Earth to Christopher?” 

“What about her?” Rio asks, like he doesn’t understand the question. 

Vanessa and his mom exchange a look of exasperation. 

“ _Boys_.” Vanessa rolls her eyes. “You’ve been stringing that girl along for months. Either shit or get off—“

“Ay,” his mother warns. “Watch your mouth.”

Vanessa’s lips twitch in embarrassment. “I _mean_ , you either gotta make it real or cut her loose.”

Rio grunts in acknowledgment, but says nothing. 

“No entiendo,” his mother says again. “Why don’t you ask this other girl out? The one you have a crush on?”

“It’s not a crush,” Rio denies. 

Vanessa pivots the conversation, though: “He can’t. She’s got a boyfriend.”

Groaning—expecting some sort of lecture from his mother—Rio sinks lower into the couch, using the book to shield his face. 

But then, completely nonchalantly, his mother asks: “So?”

Rio peeks up over his book, craning his next to look at her.

“ _‘So’_?” Vanessa demands. “What do you _mean_ ‘so’?”

Their mother shrugs, demure. She takes a sip of her tea. “I had un novio when I met your father. It didn’t stop him.”

“Amá!” Scandalized, Vanessa’s eyebrows disappear beneath her bangs.

“If you like someone, you tell them. Give them a choice. If she wants to stay with her boyfriend—” his mother waves her hand flippantly, “—forget about her. But maybe if she knows she has options, she’ll reconsider. I mean, who wouldn’t like you, eh? With that handsome face?”

Rio rubs a hand over his burning cheeks. “Mooooooom.”

His mother laughs, head back, her teeth flashing.

Still fixated, Vanessa leans forward. “Ápa made a move when you were with _someone_ _else_?”

Their mother presses her lips together. “Sí. Emiliano Rivera. He was a good boyfriend, too, but your father…” She sighs, lost in memory. “Your father was very convincing…” 

“A’ight, I’m out,” Rio says, pushing himself up off the couch and shaking himself off like a wet dog, disgusted by the dreaminess in his mother’s voice. 

“Take your tea,” his mother calls after him. “You don’t want it going cold.”

* * *

**Thursday, September 30th**

“So what happened? Did Christa say anything to Dylan?” Elena asks the next morning. Mar is slouched up against the lockers trying—and failing badly—to solve a Rubik’s Cube. Elena sits criss-cross next to him, watching Mar’s hands hungrily, like she wants to snatch the game away from him and teach him how to do it properly.

Yawning, Rio throws his beanie in his locker and digs an orange out of the front pocket of his backpack. “I don’t think so.”

“Damn,” Mar says, glancing up and watching as Rio slides down the lockers to sit on the floor with them. He keeps moving the Rubik’s Cube without watching it, prompting Elena to scowl as he undoes several moves towards completion. “That’s lucky.”

“I guess.”

“You should just end it,” Elena suggests. “Avoid the drama.”

“There’s no drama—”

“ _Yet_ ,” Elena corrects, finally losing patience and snatching the Rubik’s Cube out of Mar’s hand. 

“Maybe Christa won’t say anything?” Mar suggests, gaze falling back to Elena as he watches her deftly twist and turn the toy, impressed.

“There’s going to be drama whether or not Christa tells her.”

“Why?” Rio asks, digging his nail into the skin of the orange and beginning to peel it. 

“ _Because_ ,” Elena says, like it’s obvious. Rio and Mar look at each other and shake their heads sharply once, like they have no idea what she’s talking about. Clocking it, Elena rolls her eyes. “One, you are so _loud_ around her—”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Rio starts a neat little pile of his orange peel on the ground next to himself, carefully stacking one section on top of the other. 

“I’ve seen you in the library!”

“When? I’ve never seen you—”

“That’s because you’re so googly-eyed over her! You don’t even notice what’s happening around you—you’re, like, _zoned in_.” Elena goes bug-eyed leans into Mar’s space, staring him down.

“Dude!” Pushing Elena’s face away, Mar laughs at her imitation of Rio.

Betrayed, Rio’s lip twitches. “Whatever.”

“You are so _loud_ around her,” Elena repeats, ignoring him, twisting the toy in her hand furiously, the plastic _clacking_ as she rotates the hinges rapidly, “Christa won’t have to tell her—Dylan will probably figure it out herself.”

Rio plops a slice of orange in his mouth and chews so hard he bites his tongue, staring hard at a neon pink poster on the opposite wall encouraging students to _JUST SAY NO._ Rio finds the posters stupid for obvious reasons, but the campaign against doing drugs was rendered even more laughable by the fact that whatever goodie-two-shoes club had made it had given the job to someone with ugly, uneven handwriting.

“ _Secondly,_ ” Elena presses on, clicking the last piece into place on the Rubik’s Cube, each side now perfectly matched, “Dylan’s going to expect you to ask her to Homecoming.”

Rio jerks his head and looks over at Elena, who has switched her attention over to Mar. She holds the finished Rubik's Cube out in her palm, flourishing her other hand towards it like she’s displaying a trophy for him. 

“Tada!” she whispers, as if she’s in her own private conversation with Mar, like Rio’s not even _there._

Grinning at her, Mar reaches his hand out to rest it on Elena’s knee. Rio sees him squeeze it as he says quietly—as if Rio might miss it—“Nice job, baby.” 

Elena _glows._

Rio clears his throat. The spell is broken. 

“Dylan knows we ain’t like that,” Rio says, pulling the orange wedges apart. “We’re just kickin’ it.” 

Elena vigorously shakes her head. “She _likes_ you! And she thinks _you_ like _her_ , you crustacean. You’re leading her on.” 

She raises her eyebrows at Mar, silently asking him to back her up. Mar raises his hands like, _Keep me out of it_. Rio’s not exactly surprised, what with Mar’s track record anytime Rio and Elena bickered, but it’s not quite the support he was hoping for, either. It wasn’t like Mar didn’t understand—he’d had similar arrangements with girls before Elena—

“Nuh,” Rio protests. “I’ve never led her on. I’ve never—”

“Never what? Never laughed with her? Never talked to her on the phone all night? Never _kissed_ her, let alone—”

“Could you not yell about it?” Rio hisses, gesturing towards the steadily crowding hallway the closer the clock inches towards 8 am. 

“I’m just saying, I guarantee you she’s thinking that if you like doing _all that_ with her, surely you like _her._ She’s hoping you’ll ask her to the dance, and she’s going to be crushed when you don’t.”

Rio sets his jaw. He’d been _clear_ —he didn’t want a girlfriend, that wasn’t _him._ Mar could roll over and let Elena yank things out of his hands and try to sway his opinions, but Rio wasn’t into that. And he wasn’t about to let someone try to hold him to expectations he had no interest in. 

“Even if I liked her, I wouldn’t wanna take her to the dance,” Rio says instead, pivoting his defense. “That ain’t my thing.”

“No?” Elena’s voice is harsh, confrontational.

Confused, Rio looks at Mar, who shrugs, and Rio can’t tell if he’s feigning misunderstanding or if he’s just as clueless about where Elena’s going with this as Rio is. 

“You wouldn’t want to go with Beth if you could?”

“No.” It was still a _dance._ Why would he want to pay money to listen to music and hang out with people he doesn’t like?

“You wouldn’t want to see her all pretty and done up? You wouldn’t want to make her laugh by making fun of the music? You wouldn’t want her to cling to you during a slow dance, resting her head on your chest?”

Elena’s got her chin jutted and brows furrowed in a challenge. Rio licks his teeth at the image of Elizabeth pressed against him—warm and soft, probably—with her hands on his shoulder blades, her cheek against his sternum, and her head tucked under his chin. 

Rio doesn’t answer immediately, choosing instead to focus on stripping the pith off one of the orange wedges. 

“Just ‘cause I like her or whatever doesn’t mean I would suddenly be into shit like that.”

“You never know,” Mar says, choosing this—of all moments—to jump in. He reaches over to snatch one of the last pieces of orange from Rio’s hand, and Rio scowls. “I thought that, too, but I dunno, man. Those things are surprisingly... fun? It’s different when you really like someone.”

Smiling, Elena puts her hand on top of Mar’s on her knee, and suddenly they’re gone again, starry-eyed and absorbed in only each other. Rio puts the last piece of orange on his tongue and concentrates on nothing but the sweetbitter juice that fills his mouth.

When the five-minute bell rings, Rio occupies himself by throwing his orange peels in the trash while Mar and Elena say goodbye like Mar’s shipping off to ‘Nam or something. Rio tries not to roll his eyes, rocking on his feet and waiting for Elena to walk with him to Physics.

He regrets this courtesy the second Mar disappears down the hall and Rio discovers Elena is still determined to press the subject.

“I really do think you should end it, Rio,” she says, taking two steps for each one of Rio’s long strides.

“Leave it alone, E, a’ight? God, you sound like my sister.”

“Well!” Elena huffs. “She’s _right_! If you like someone else—”

“Someone else that’s got a boyfriend, ‘member?” 

They turn the corner to the science wing, and it doesn’t matter how crowded the hallway is: Rio’s eye is immediately caught by the image of Dean practically bent over, gnawing on Elizabeth’s neck like a mangy dog with a bone. 

Elena tries to grab Rio’s wrist, like she’s trying to protect or comfort Rio from what he’s seeing.

“It’s nothin’,” Rio says gruffly, pulling his wrist back as Elizabeth’s eyes find his in the crowd. He drops his gaze to his feet.

“Rio, _stop,_ ” Elena commands. He stops in his tracks, turning back to her in question. Someone sidesteps around him, rushing to class. Elena sucks in a breath, and then, like she’s offering him a gift, she says, “She _likes_ you, dummy.”

“Huh?” Rio looks back again towards Elizabeth. When he zeroes in on her through the throng of people, he sees she now has a foot between her and her boyfriend. Something in him loosens. He refocuses on Elena.

“It’s not just you. In the library. I’ve seen the way she looks at you, too.” Elena pauses, letting this wash over Rio, who tries to look indifferent. “If she knew you felt the same…”

Rio blinks.

The thing was, he’d thought about it last night—a lot. He’d imagined it, telling her straight up. At first, she’d think he was joking, that he was teasing her. Elizabeth’s cheeks would burn crimson and she might sputter a bit—he always liked it when he got her to do that—but Rio would just sit there, watching her, waiting until she realized it was true: he liked her. But that’s as far as he could get in the daydream. When he tried to think about what might happen next, what Elizabeth might _do_ , he drew a complete blank.

Rio figured Elizabeth already had to know he was into her because Elena was right. He wasn’t subtle, and every time he flirted with her, Elizabeth got flustered and jittery. _That_ made him think she was into him, too, except—well. Except she just kept letting Dean Boland slobber all over her in the hallways. 

He couldn’t figure it out, why she stayed with him. If she knew Rio liked her—which she had to, right, ‘cause she wasn’t dumb—then the only reason she would stay with a guy like Dean Boland was because Rio was wrong: she _didn’t_ like him. She didn’t want Rio, but his polar opposite: a dumbass jock, goofy and obtuse, one of those guys who got everything handed to him and thought he deserved it.

“Just, think about it, alright? Things might be different,” Elena encourages again. Rio scratches an eyebrow. “I mean, she just jumped about three feet away from her boyfriend the second she saw you.”

The minute bell rings. 

“We’re gonna be late.”

“ _Rio_ ,” Elena says, exasperated.

But Rio turns on his heel and makes his way into Mr. Keppel’s classroom. 

During the morning announcements, he focuses intently on doodling all over his binder in silver sharpie. Elizabeth’s voice fills the room, bubbly and sweet—the version of her he doesn’t know and doesn’t care to. It dulls her, this niceness. He likes her when she’s raw and wild, when her eyes are at their bluest. 

He feels Elena watching him the whole time, but Rio doesn’t look up at the TV once. 

* * *

It’s harder when she’s in the same space as him, though. The second he walks into English class, his eyes land on her: she’s got her back to him, fully rotated in her seat to give her friend her full attention. 

“Ruby!” she squeals. “Tell me everything! How did he ask?”

The friend—Ruby—beams. “Here, look—” Rio watches her dig a note out of her pocket and pass it to Elizabeth, who unfolds it greedily. 

She reads it and squeals again, pressing the note to her chest. “Oh my gosh! So sweet.”

“Did you get asked to Homecoming?” Melanie Pugh asks from across the room. 

Ruby’s cheeks redden. “Yeah,” she says, pushing up her glasses.

“By who?” Charity Tharp presses.

“Stan Hill.”

A chorus of girls—including Elizabeth—coo until they all break into giggles. Rio rubs his jaw.

“He’s so cute,” Melanie sighs. 

Grinning wide, Ruby turns back to Elizabeth. “We should go dress shopping this weekend! I mean, if—”

Elizabeth cuts her off, nodding vigorously. “Definitely. Yeah! That sounds fun.” 

Her voice is all bubbly again. 

Rio sets his jaw and looks down at his desk, noticing the word _FUCK_ etched deep into the wood. 

_And yeah, that feels about right,_ he thinks, because somehow being confronted with the reminder that Elizabeth’s a certain kind of girl—the type of princess who gets sad because her boyfriend doesn’t properly ask her to Homecoming, the type of girl that would love shit like dances and Friday night at the football game and Saturday Movie Dates—makes something heavy sink to the bottom of his stomach. 

These were all the things that Elizabeth would always want, and Rio was never going to be the type of guy who would want to give it to her—and he suspects that Elizabeth wouldn’t exactly be eager to give Rio what he wants, either. 

(Dylan, on the other hand? She always seemed just as happy as he was to kick it in the back of his car, sharing a blunt after sharing a lot more).

The bell rings, and Ms. Patel goes to the front of the class and sits up on her stool, one leg tucked under the other, her clipboard in hand as she takes attendance, her voice a dull murmur as she calls off kids’ names. 

Elizabeth turns around in her seat, her eyes immediately finding Rio’s. She smiles, guarded. It doesn’t reach her eyes. 

Rio doesn’t know what to make of it. She’d been weird yesterday—unusually quiet after that situation with Dean in the library—but Rio isn’t really sure where he fit into that equation. He’d riled her up asking for the invitation, but she was subdued in the car, quiet and lost in her own thoughts, staring out the window at the manicured lawns and white picket fences of her neighborhood. 

“And Christopher’s here today!” Ms. Patel celebrates, her eyes crinkling warmly as she checks him off on the attendance sheet. Rio likes her. She was one of the few teachers that didn’t hold his absences against him—she was just happy whenever he actually did show up. 

Hearing his name jolts Elizabeth, though, and she looks away, reflexively trying to twist the bracelet that _should_ be on her wrist, but which is actually sitting on Rio’s bedside table, snapped in half. 

He wonders if she’s figured out he has it. 

Peeking back at him, realizing that he’s never stopped looking at her, Elizabeth blushes, her lips turning up at the corner—genuine, this time. Rio feels the familiar electricity course through his veins—something he’s come only to associate with her. He shifts, trying to ignore it. 

“Alright.” Ms. Patel’s voice cuts through Rio’s thoughts, and he turns his head, trying to focus on her. “Are we ready to talk about Gatsby’s idealization of Daisy in chapter five? Who wants to start us off?”

* * *

Rio’s feet feel like lead as he makes his way to seventh period. When he should make a turn down the history hallway, he instead finds himself walking straight towards Madame Heller’s room where he finds Mar already seated, his backpack sitting on the floor between his legs. The bell hasn’t rung just yet, and Madam Heller’s at the back of the room filing papers.

It takes Rio a moment to catch Mar’s attention–people jostle past Rio at the doorway and the classroom’s already half-fun with kids chattering and passing notes—but when he does he only has to jerk his head in the vaguest direction of the baseball field for Mar to immediately catch on and swipe his backpack up to duck out of the room before Madam Heller notices.

The hallways are nearly empty as kids disappear into classrooms. It’s only Rio, Mar, and a few other stragglers when they run into the resource officer just one hallway away from freedom.

“You boys on your way to class?” Officer Talton squints at them, a hand on his walkie talkie as he rocks forward as if he means to follow them.

“Of course, sir,” Rio and Mar say in unison, an air of seriousness to their voices. 

Then, before Talton can decide whether he believes them or not, they stride off and away, only erupting into laughter when they get far enough down the hall that Talton won’t hear them.

They burst through the double doors at the back of the school and spill out into the fresh air. It’s quiet outside, everyone else tucked away in the classrooms, and the only sound is the crunch of gravel under Rio and Mar’s feet as they round the building to the pathway that leads to the baseball fields and the football stadium.

The grass of the JV field gleams bright in the sun as the boys slip behind the chain link fence into the dirt dugout where they settle on the cold metal benches. The parking lot is always monitored, so this is where they come whenever they dip out of class for a period to smoke—a little patch of privacy tucked away from all the hubbub. 

“You skipping history?” Mar asks, pulling a tie off his wrist and throwing his long hair up into a bun. Rio nods, rifling through an interior pocket of his backpack for a pre-rolled joint. 

“Avoiding Dylan?”

Rio shrugs. “I guess.”

“Elena get in your head?”

“Your girlfriend can be real annoying, dude. She won’t fucking drop it,” Rio says while he lights the joint. The tip catches and burns bright as Rio takes a long drag. 

“She’s determined,” Mar agrees, but he sounds more like he’s praising her than like he’s commiserating with Rio.

Rio gnaws his cheek. “Yeah, somethin’ like that.” 

He tilts his head back against the wooden wall of the dugout and stares across the field. A million years ago, he’d thought of trying out for the baseball team, but by the time tryouts had rolled around, Vanessa had been pregnant, and all Rio’s focus had been on getting enough money so she could take care of it. Now he barely remembers wanting to play. 

“She really wants you to get with Beth,” Mar says, reaching over to take the joint from Rio’s fingers. 

Rio rolls his eyes. “Why? So we can do double dates at the movies and shit?”

“No,” Mar says, surprising him. “Or that’s not the only reason. She thinks Beth will be good for you.”

Rio looks sharply at Mar. “What does that mean?”

“She kinda wigged about the locker sweep last week,” Mar explains after he takes a hit. “And she gets all worried about you and the work you’re doing for Carlos.”

Rio scoffs. “Why?”

“‘Cause she cares about you, man,” Mar says, like it should be obvious.

Rio rubs his wrist, remembering Elena’s fingers snapping around it when he’d seen Dean kissing Elizabeth. 

“No, I mean, why is she worried about Carlos?”

“You know why. Dude’s whack.”

“He’s harmless,” Rio counters. Carlos loved to tell stories talking himself up as someone that could take care of business, but Rio had never _seen_ anything. Mostly the guy just sat around his house getting high and drinking booze. Rio had hardly even thought about being short on his drop tonight —they’d known each other forever, and Carlos knew Rio was good for it.“Elena’s trippin’ over nothin’.”

Mar looks doubtful, probably thinking about the time the whole neighborhood had woken up to him and his girlfriend having a screaming match in the street.

 _But that was different,_ Rio thinks. 

“What’s Elizabeth got to do with Carlos?” Rio asks.

“I think Elena thinks Beth’ll set you back on the straight-and-narrow.”

Rio huffs out a laugh, stealing the joint back from Mar. “Like Elena got you to do?” 

Mar grins mischievously. 

“You _had_ to go for a goodie-two-shoes, huh?”

“Yeah, well.” Mar slouches and threads his hands over his belly, laughing easily. “Join the club, man. Beth’s gonna be no better.”

Rio’s jaw locks. Mar says it with such _certainty,_ like it’s inevitable, like something real could happen between him and the girl that squealed over a Homecoming invite. 

“Nah.” Rio juts out his lower lip and scuffs his shoe in the dirt. “That ain’t happening.”

“Why? Because having a girlfriend’s not ‘your thing’?”

Rio lazily lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Thought you really liked her. Thought she was different.”

“I mean, she’s cool, yeah, but she’s just your average suburban princess with a taste for kleptomania. You could find a girl like that anywhere.” Rio grins, trying to make it a joke. 

Mar sucks air in through his teeth and makes a clicking sound. “You’re stupid, man.”

“What? I’m just sayin’. I don’t need the bitch-ass drama,” Rio justifies. He scratches at his knee, avoiding looking at Mar. 

“I dunno why you think having a girlfriend is any more drama than hooking up with different girls and then dipping when you get bored.”

Rio sucks his top lip into his mouth, quiet.

“When you like someone— _for real_ like someone—having a girlfriend is dope. Sometimes Elena bakes me brownies and brings ‘em to school just ‘cause she knows I like them. She corrects my spelling on all of my English essays, and sometimes she does this thing? Where she just, like, runs her fingers through my hair when we’re watching a movie together? I dunno, man, but it feels real fuckin’ good. Sometimes she braids it, too. It’s weird but it also feels kinda nice.”

Rio squints, looking at Mar. “Dude, I don’t even know what to do with that information.”

“Ummm, I think the answer is ‘be jealous,’ obviously? You’re the one that’s all emo. I’m living the dream, man.” 

Rio doesn’t say anything and he can feel Mar looking at him.

“What’s really going on?”

Sighing, Rio stretches out his legs and leans his head back so that he’s looking at the ceiling. He could tell Mar anything, he doesn’t know how to untangle everything in his brain. 

“Nothing’s goin’ on,” Rio says after a long time. “I just don’t want the expectations, you know?”

“Like Homecoming?”

Rio nods. “That boyfriend stuff ain’t for me. I just wanna do my own thing. I don’t wanna be tied down.”

Mar laughs, and Rio furrows his brow. 

“I dunno. I kinda think being tied down sounds like fun,” Mar says suggestively. 

Rio shoves him, but he laughs, too. “You’re an idiot.”

Mar just grins. 

* * *

Stoned out of their minds, Rio and Mar skip last period in favor of walking six blocks away to the good mini-mart that has the loaded nachos and the jumbo hot dogs. 

Mar also snags a disposable camera that’s displayed at the register—deciding that they should walk around and take pictures of items that look vaguely like the alphabet. Mar wants to spell out “HOMECOMING?” and get the photos developed over the weekend so that on Monday, he can ask Elena to the dance.

“It was a project Elena did in her photography class,” he explains, clearing the pile of snacks they bought off the counter and stuffing sour gummies and a bottle of Coke into his pockets. “It was super dope. She took all these photos and recreated the lyrics to our song: _All that matters is love, love, your love_ _._ She gave it to me for our three month anniversary.”

“That’s cheesy as fuck,” Rio says, popping a nacho in his mouth and pressing against the glass door of the mini-mart with his shoulder. The bell dings as they exit. “Also, a three month anniversary isn’t even a real thing.” 

“Anything can be a real thing.”

“That… doesn’t even make sense.”

Shrugging, Mar takes a huge bite of his hot dog. Mouth full, he says, “Anyone can celebrate anything they want. My cousin celebrates her half-birthday. My mom and dad celebrate Tamal’s adoption. They make him a li’l fish cake and everything, like that cat is more spoiled than me and Guillermo combined, man—”

Rio laughs, but he stops when he hears the shift in Mar’s tone. 

“—but Elena likes to celebrate monthly anniversaries, and I like Elena, so we do. Why do you care? You’re just bent out of shape because you’re all sprung on a girl that you think isn’t gonna go for your hit-it-and-quit-it schtick.” 

Rio shrugs, quietly uncomfortable as he realizes that he’s stepped over the line and made Mar throw up his walls. He doesn’t say anything, and they walk a little further, eating and occasionally pausing for Mar to take a picture—the crosswalk button for an “O,” a cropped tire for a “C.” Rio tries to make amends by grabbing the buckle clip on his backpack and suggesting Mar use it as an “E.”

It works well enough, because soon Mar is humming a tune Rio doesn’t recognize.

“What’s that?”

“‘Crush’ by Smashing Pumpkins.”

“That your song?” Rio asks as he takes a swig of pop.

Mar hums an assent, pausing to take a picture of a double archway on a building that resembles an “M.”

“Cool,” Rio says, even though he’s unfamiliar with it. He’s just trying to sound supportive. 

He doesn’t really know how to apologize, but he didn’t exactly mean to insult Mar and Elena’s relationship—if anything, Rio just doesn’t know how to _process_ it. Mar had a lot of girlfriends in freshman year and each one was more annoying than the last, but they were all so short-term. Elena was different, a girl Mar met in second-semester Ceramics class, and Rio liked her, but in some ways, Rio was still adjusting to having Mar’s attention split between the two of them. Most of the time, they were a trio, but every now and then, Mar and Elena made it clear that some plans were just for _them._ Rio wasn’t invited. 

He got it—but it was still strange, the way Mar was changing and leaving Rio behind. He used to think things like a three month anniversary were dumb, too. Back in middle school, he and Rio used to rag on Guillermo and Vanessa for getting all caught up in their girlfriends and boyfriends like lovesick puppies. Now Mar was joining their ranks. 

In a certain way, it made Rio almost more prickly about the ways he himself was changing because of Elizabeth. It was a lot to take in all at once. 

So maybe that’s why Rio says _yes_ when Mar suggests taking a detour on their way back to school down to the park, where he knows there’s an art sculpture that looks like a “G.” 

Rio knows he won’t make it back in time for tutoring, but maybe it was okay if he didn’t make Elizabeth’s schedule his priority. 

They hadn’t confirmed a tutoring date for today, anyway. The drive home yesterday after he’d wrangled the invite from Dean had been almost uncomfortably quiet, and she’d popped out of his car without anything more than a mumbled, “Thank you.” It wasn’t like the plans were _concrete_.

He didn’t _owe_ her anything. 

Still, the longer Mar takes, the more agitated Rio gets. He wonders if Elizabeth will go into the library anyway, assuming Rio will just show up. He pictures her waiting, looking up every time the doors open. He imagines her agitation increasing every time it’s someone else, and the way she’d reach to twist that stupid bracelet on her wrist—only it won’t be there, just like Rio. 

He finally just suggests that Mar round out the project by making a question mark out of a gummy worm and an olive from the loaded nachos so they can get back.

* * *

They arrive at the school nearly twenty minutes after the final bell. Rio can’t help it—he looks around for a sign of Elizabeth, but the parking lot is mostly deserted, the only cars left being that of the staff and of the kids who have to stay after school for sports or detention. 

“I’ll give you a ride home,” Rio offers. “Unless you’re going to Elena’s?”

“Nah, not today,” Mar says, sliding into the passenger seat and immediately reaching over to fiddle with the buttons of the radio, refusing to listen to Rio’s jazz station. “You wanna catch a movie or something?”

“Can’t,” Rio says. “I gotta babysit the girls when Vanessa gets to work. And I’m meeting up with Carlos later tonight.”

Mar doesn’t say anything. 

Rio pulls out onto the main street and they’re only driving for about a minute and a half when Rio spots her from behind—her ugly floral backpack high on her back, not slouching like most people’s. She walks at a brisk pace.

“Fuck.” 

“Huh?” 

Rio rubs a hand over his head. He’d forgotten that she’d miss her bus, waiting for him in the library. Considering how late it was and how close she still was to campus, she’d waited for him for a while, too. She’d probably stared at the clock, annoyed but—but apparently she’d held out for him, believed that he was coming. 

He clenches his jaw. 

“Roll down your window,” Rio commands.

“Why?”

“Just—do it, a’ight?”

Mar shrugs and rolls down his window, and Rio crawls over to the edge of the road next to her.

“Elizabeth.”

She jumps out of her skin, turning toward the car with her hand on her chest. Recognizing Rio leaning towards her from the driver’s seat, her chest and neck immediately become blotchy and red, and her face sets into a scowl. Rio bites his lip, glancing away, and when he looks back, she’s twisted away, power walking away from him with her nose in the air.

“Jesus Christ,” Rio mutters. He eases the car forward, easily keeping up with her, and says, louder: “Elizabeth. Come on. I’ll give you a ride.”

“I don’t need one.”

 _God, she is so fucking stubborn_ , Rio thinks.

Rio feels Mar’s eyes slide over to him, his eyebrows raised. Rio ignores him, but he looks over his shoulder when he hears the car behind him lay on the horn.

Gritting his teeth, Rio rolls down his own window and waves the car forward, then refocuses on Elizabeth, who’s got her hands clasped around the straps of her backpack, shoulders squared in indignation. 

“Elizabeth, come on,” he calls. “I’m holdin’ up traffic. Get in the car.”

She whirls towards him. “Oh, do you have a problem holding things up?” 

“Elizabeth, _stop_ ,” Rio calls. She ignores him, and he sighs, looking down and setting his jaw before he looks back up, chewing on his tongue. “Please?”

She stops in her tracks, turning to look at him. Her expression is expectant, impatient, as she waits for him to say something.

Why did she have to make this so difficult?

“It’s a long walk. Just… let me give you a ride.”

It’s not quite what she wanted to hear, apparently. 

“I’m fine,” Elizabeth insists. “I’m _great_. No need to worry about me.”

Mar whistles, like he can tell Rio’s in trouble. 

“I’m not—” Rio runs his hand down his face, trying not to pay attention to Mar, gleefully amused at this exchange. “Stop being stubborn for no reason, Jesus.”

Elizabeth looks away, down the street, maybe considering just how long of a walk she has left, maybe just pretending to consider saying no to piss him off.

“Get in the car, Elizabeth.”

“Fine,” she huffs. She steps towards the door to the backseat, but Mar scrambles, unbuckling and clicking the door open.

“What—” Rio starts. 

“Here,” Mar says to Elizabeth, gesturing to the front seat.

Elizabeth stares Mar down, like she’s about to refuse him, but he hits her with his goofy smile, and she hesitates, disarmed.

“Beth?” he asks, holding out his hand. “Or is it Elizabeth?”

“Beth,” she says tightly, glancing at Rio with narrowed eyes.

Taking his hand back unshaken, Mar pretends not to notice her terseness. 

“Oh, weird. Rio always says ‘Elizabeth.’” He shrugs, like he didn’t just insinuate Rio talks about her a lot. “I’m Mar.”

Rio looks out his driver’s window, scratching at his ear. He decides he’s going to kill Mar later. 

“Ladies first,” Mar presses again with a grin on his face and his arm hooked over the door’s window.

Elizabeth caves. “Thanks, I guess.” She tosses her backpack into the back by pressing it over the bench seat. She’s barely in the car, though, when Mar starts ducking like he’s getting into the front, too.

“What—” Elizabeth lets go of the seatbelt she’d started to pull over her, and it _whacks_ against the plastic wall as it snaps back into place.

“There’s enough room for three in the front,” Mar says innocently. “But you’re smaller than me so I thought you should be in the middle.”

“I—” Elizabeth starts, but Mar, hovering on the edge of the seat, reaches for the door handle and begins pulling it closed, forcing her to move over.

Elizabeth scoots closer to Rio, her legs spread by the raised flooring in front of the middle seat, so she’s got one foot on Rio’s side, one on Mar’s. It means that Rio can feel part of her leg against his. It’s warm. He swallows thickly.

(Yeah, he’s _definitely_ murdering Mar. Maybe he'll make him choke on his girlfriend’s Rubik’s Cube—that sounds good).

“Don’t forget to buckle up,” Mar says, pulling his seatbelt over him. “Safety first, right?”

Elizabeth stares blankly at him. “Um. Right.” 

Rio pulls back onto the road. Nobody says anything. The only sound is Mar, unbothered, absently drumming his fingers against the car door as he stares out of the window.

Out of the corner of his eye, Rio sees Elizabeth twisting her pointer and thumb around her wrist, back and forth, back and forth, radiating a mixture of discomfort and annoyance. 

Rio clears his throat, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Lose your bracelet?” 

Elizabeth doesn’t respond, but she yanks her hand away from her opposite wrist. Rio can feel her looking at him suspiciously.

“Your boyfriend mad?” Rio asks before he can stop himself.

Mar stops drumming against the door handle for a second, frozen. Then, noticing the strained silence, he resumes as if he hadn’t stopped, but the rhythm is more deliberate now, like Mar has to concentrate on it.

“I just… didn’t wear it today,” she lies. 

Rio nods, but a sound of disbelief escapes his lips. Elizabeth looks at him sharply, and the sudden movement makes her leg twitch and slide against his. Rio flexes his fingers on the steering wheel.

Then, staring straight ahead, Elizabeth says, “So, did you just forget, or did you just not care about our appointment?”

Rio rolls his shoulders. “I didn’t know we had one,” he defends. “You were being all weird yesterday and didn’t say anything.”

“I just thought it was assumed,” she snaps. “It’s not like we haven’t done it, like, every single day—”

The reminder that he’s put a lot of time into this ignites Rio’s temper further. 

“Well, I had someone else I had to help for once—Mar wanted a hand for his plan to ask his girlfriend to Homecoming.”

Mar hears the pointedness in Rio’s voice, and he leans forward, glancing at Rio to try and make sense of it. 

At the way Elizabeth lifts her chin and pushes her shoulders back, Rio knows she’s caught his meaning. 

“Why’d he ask _you_? Thought dances weren’t your scene?”

“They aren’t. I just know how to ask a girl out properly." 

“Oh yeah? How are you asking _your_ girlfriend to the dance?” Elizabeth’s voice is laced with agitation. Then, ice cold, she asks, “What’s her name, by the way? I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned it. Or _her_ , come to think of it.”

Mar exhales a breath a little too loudly. 

Rio’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. He’d known that Elizabeth had read Dylan’s note, but she’d never said anything, never indicated it meant anything to her. Rio revels in her jealousy.

He doesn’t correct her: “Dunno yet.”

A noise escapes Mar’s throat. Both Rio and Elizabeth ignore it.

“Are you bringing her to the party, too? Because Dean likes to know how many people to expect. _He_ likes to follow through on a _plan_ ,” she says, trying to bring the conversation back on him skipping out on tutoring. 

“He likes to know these things, huh?”

“ _Yes_.”

“He know you mad ‘cause he ain’t ask you to Homecoming all special?”

Elizabeth balks.

“Told him that you hate being called Bethie yet?”

Elizabeth flushes red.

“Why do you hate him?”

“I don’t hate him. I don’t care about that guy at all.”

Mar sinks lower in his seat, embarrassed, but neither of them notice.

“He’s been _nothing_ but _nice_ to you.”

“Yeah? How ‘bout to _you_ , though?” Rio asks, and Elizabeth’s mouth falls open in surprise.

They stare at each other briefly, eyes wild.

“You missed my turn,” Elizabeth snaps, and Rio jerks his eyes back to the road.

When he doubles around the block and finally pulls up to her yard, Elizabeth clicks the seatbelt off as quickly as she can, eager to get away from him and disappear into her house, back to her princess tower where she’s waited on hand and foot, where she doesn’t have to deal with anyone challenging her. 

The warmth of her leg against Rio’s thigh disappears and he shifts in his seat, annoyed as she twists and snatches her backpack out of the backseat. 

“So I just wanna make sure to _ask_ and _confirm_ , you know—like people do when they wanna actually make appointments,” Rio says when Mar pops the door open and Elizabeth starts sliding across the seat. “Tomorrow in the library after school?”

Elizabeth whips her head back at him, incredulous, like she can’t believe Rio would suggest that they have a tutoring session after this. Rio wants to look away, already regretting his words, realizing this wasn’t the win he thought it might be. 

He thinks she’s going to protest, but she just glares and sniffs, “Fine.” 

Mar lets Elizabeth out and then gets back in the car. Rio peels away, Elizabeth haunting him in his rearview mirror as she chooses not to immediately storm into her house in favor of glaring stonily at him from her driveway, arms crossed. Rio’s blood is boiling—at her, at himself—and Mar nods. He doesn’t stop nodding.

“Well. You played that _super_ chill.”

Rio sucks his teeth.

“On the plus side, I mean—she’s as bat shit crazy as you?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I just have one question?”

“Dude, I swear—”

“Just one—”

Rio pulls up at a red light and turns to Mar, eyebrow cocked, waiting. 

“How’s that no-girlfriend, no-drama thing going?”

* * *

Rio’s zipping up his hoodie and pulling his bedroom door closed behind him when he looks up to see Vanessa draped over the armchair, his _Gatsby_ book in front of her face.

“What are you doin’?”

“God, I forgot how obsessed Gatsby is with Daisy,” Vanessa says, eyes still moving across the page. Rio doesn’t say anything, and when she finishes the paragraph she glances over at him. “Where are you going?”

“Just out for a minute,” he says cryptically.

“¿Ádonde?” Vanessa asks again.

“Out,” Rio repeats.

“Áma y Ápa están dormidos,” she hisses, pointing sharply towards their parents' bedroom door at the end of the hallway behind Rio.

Hearing their light snores through the door, he nods. “Yeah? So?”

“So don’t you think you should stay in the house maybe?” Vanessa asks, like it’s some sort of big deal.

“I’m not a kid,” Rio argues, moving towards the front door and throwing up his hood. “And I’ll be back soon.”

“Are you going to Carlos’s?”

God, sometimes it felt like Elena and Vanessa were the same person. 

“So what if I am?”

“I thought you were turning over a new leaf—”

Rio rolls his eyes, sliding his feet into his Nikes. “I’ll be back.”

As quietly as possible, he yanks open the front door, disappearing outside without turning back to look at Vanessa, who he knows gotta be standing there still, her mouth agape.

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Rio stares down at his feet as he makes his way down the street to Carlos’s place.

He doesn’t understand why Vanessa and Elena act like hanging around Carlos is so dangerous. Rio had known the guy since he was ten—first just as the dude who would give the neighborhood kids sodas out of this big refrigerator in his garage when he was hanging with his buddies on the lawn, smoking cigarettes and drinking out of Solo cups, and later as the guy that would slip a teenager a beer at the neighborhood block party. He’d always been kind of annoying—acting like he was living the high life when the paint on his walls was peeling and when his girlfriends caked on too much make-up and had scars up and down their arms—but Rio tries to tolerate him. 

Carlos paid him well—12%—and he was always punctual with payment. That’s how Rio had been able to get the Caddy so fast after he’d paid for Vanessa’s abortion—there was almost a constant flow of money, which was cool except his parents sometimes got suspicious of how Rio was buying himself new kicks and chains and tapes all the time, so he’d had to lie and pretend that he had a job at a Taco Bell that he knew his parents would never, ever visit.

Rio jogs up the steps of Carlos’s porch. The house is dark, but there’s a dull throb of music on the other side of the front door, and Rio doesn’t bother to knock, slipping in quietly.

There’s a sagging plaid couch in the middle of a mostly bare room, minus an old battered coffee table and a big-screen TV with a cluster of wires twisted up on the floor. Carlos and a few of his buddies are hanging out here, playing a sports game on the Super Nintendo that sits on the scuffed-up floor. Talking shit to his opponent with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, Carlos doesn’t seem to notice right away that Rio’s edged into the room.

“Hey,” Rio says when the game finishes, moving so he’s between the TV and the couch, backlit by the glow of the screen. 

“Hey, man,” Carlos says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and flicking a dying lighter at the end of his cigarette. “How’s it going? Got your orders?”

“Yeah.” Rio pulls a piece of paper out of his jean pocket, a list of all the things kids had asked him to get for them for the next two weeks, including Dean’s order for kegs and hard liquor and weed. 

“Damn.” Carlos whistles, eyes scanning the list. “What _are_ all the kiddies up to?”

Carlos’s buddy, some scrawny guy in a wifebeater that always had a runny nose, laughs. It makes Rio set his jaw.

“Homecoming’s comin’ up. Lots of parties.”

“Cute,” the other friend says, a guy with a scorpion tattoo on his bald skull. Rio bristles.

Grunting, Carlos tosses the order sheet on a coffee table covered with condensation stains. He takes a drag of his cigarette, the tip burning bright. 

“Yeah, looks like someone’s having a kegger.” 

Carlos lets the cigarette hang in the corner of his mouth as he pulls a pocket knife out of his jeans and begins using it to push dirt out from underneath his fingernails. He flicks it onto the floor and Rio tries not to grimace in disgust.

“Yeah. Actually, that one was kinda tricky—”

Carlos raises an eyebrow, pausing with the knife underneath his thumbnail. He sets the cigarette on an ashtray, then looks at Rio, waiting for him to continue. 

“The guy acted like he was gonna go elsewhere for better prices—a cousin he had or somethin’—so I offered him a deal.” He’d known as soon as he agreed to cut the price for Dean that he’d have to come up with something to tell Carlos, and he’d decided over dinner to play it casual and vague. 

“That right?” Carlos asks, unusually quiet. 

“Yeah,” Rio lies, playing nonchalant as he turns his head back and digs his envelope of money out of his back pocket. “Figured we didn’t want to lose the sale. Plus, I know this guy. Total dumbass. This sort of deal could get us a customer for life, y’know.”

“Mmm.”

Rio runs his tongue along his teeth, uncertain, but Carlos’s face is blank. 

“Just seemed like good business,” Rio explains. 

“‘Good business,’” repeats the bald guy. “Heh.”

“Li’l entrepreneur over here,” Wifebeater adds, coughing out a laugh. 

Rio glances over at them, then refocuses on Carlos, who resumes cleaning his nails, silent. A flicker of neon light from the video game holding screen dances across his face.

“Got my money?” Carlos asks finally, saying no more on the topic.

Rio lets out a breath. 

“Yeah, uh—” Rio holds out the drop to Carlos, who doesn’t notice. Rio glances at Wifebeater and Skull Tat, who stare at him, amused. Awkward, he drops the envelope onto the coffee table. “The drop’s a li’l short, but you can take it out of my cut.”

Wifebeater and Scorpion Tat look at each other. 

“The drop’s short?” Carlos asks it so quietly Rio steps closer to be able to hear. Knife still in one hand, he reaches with the opposite hand for his cigarette. He takes a puff and then blows the smoke out of the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t look at Rio. 

“Yeah, fifty bucks,” Rio explains, because he’d put some of his own money in the envelope to make up the difference—basically all of what Dean had overpaid in their first deal and then some more. “But like I said—you can just dock me.”

Carlos doesn’t say anything. The only sound is the thumps of rap music coming from behind one of the closed doors down the hallway. 

Rio shifts his weight from one foot to the other. 

“Where’s my money, Rio?”

“Bet he used it to buy some tickets to the dance,” Skull Tat taunts. 

“Bet he’s hoping he can get his first blowie behind the bleachers afterward.”

Rio rolls his shoulders, telling himself to ignore it. 

“I’m not playin’ around,” Carlos growls, and suddenly he’s standing just in front of Rio—his breath hot against Rio’s face—but all Rio’s eyes zero in on is the too-long pile of ashes that need to be flicked off the end of Carlos’s cigarette. “Where is my money?”

He doesn’t get why Carlos is so pissed off about it: he’d already offered to take a smaller cut, and shit, he’d already put in his own money—Carlos was making the exact same profit as always, so what else did he want Rio to do? 

Before he realizes what’s happening, Rio feels the sharp tip of Carlos’s blade pressed into his chin. He freezes, his heart thumping in his chest. 

“I’m not gonna ask again. What’d you do with my fuckin’ money, Rio?”

Rio swallows, forcing himself to look up, to meet Carlos’s eyes. They’re hard and stony, and Rio notices for the first time how a sheen of sweat glistens over Carlos’s entire face. 

“I didn’t do anything.” 

Carlos grins, but it’s ugly and twisted. “He didn’t do anything with it,” he repeats, looking back at his boys. “It just disappeared all on its own. You believe that?”

Rio considers his options. He could pretend he lost it, but he doesn’t want Carlos to think that he’s irresponsible. He could pretend he’d needed to take a loan, but he didn’t want Carlos to think it’d be something that happened again. Rio decides to be honest—mostly.

“It was stolen—out of my locker.”

Rio wonders what would happen if he took a step back and moved away from the knife. Would Carlos let him go? Rio doesn’t think Carlos would actually cut him, but he’s never seen Carlos like this, never seen his eyes go dark, never had Carlos get so close to him that Rio can make out every hair in his scraggly mustache. 

“Stolen? By who?” Carlos flicks his hand, and string of ash sluices off the end of the cigarette, falling to the floor. 

“I don’t know,” Rio says, but maybe something flits across his face, ‘cause he thinks of Elizabeth, thinks of her sitting at home right now, probably in some set of matching pajamas in a canopy bed in that big ol’ house, tucked away in her tower. Safe. Untouched. _Oblivious._

He wonders, again, why she stole his money. If she ever even considered what her shopping spree was costing Rio. 

_And he’d let her get away with it_ , he thinks, neck burning hot.

Carlos cocks his head. His eyes flash dangerously, and it’s like Rio is seeing him clearly for the first time. 

Rio looks down, knowing in his gut that he’s going to keep letting Elizabeth get away with it, too, because Carlos was _never_ going to hear her name come out of Rio’s mouth. 

“I think you do know,” Carlos says lowly. “Who was it? You get into a fight with your buddy? Your dopey neighbor?”

Rio sets his jaw. “It wasn’t Mar.”

“How about one of your teeny bopper girlfriends?” Carlos presses. “You give ‘em your locker combo, make ‘em think what you all got is special? Hopin’ it’ll make ‘em let you touch them?”

Clenching his teeth, Rio grits, “ _No_.”

Amusement crosses Carlos’s face, and he smirks. 

“I don’t know who it was,” Rio says firmly, but he can feel his heart racing.

“I think it’s time to teach you a li’l lesson, huh?” Carlos looks back at the two men on the couch, who look positively thrilled with the suggestion. When he turns back, he clasps his knifeless hand on Rio’s shoulder. Rio glances at the cigarette, feeling heady with the smoke so close to his face. “See, there’s a distribution system—I give you the product, you sell the product for _me._ ”

“I know.”

“You do? Then why you think you can call the shots?” 

“I don’t—” Rio protests, and he feels Carlos’s hand grip his shoulder tighter, his fingers digging into Rio’s flesh. “It wasn’t my fault—”

“Nah, see, this isn’t high school. Blame game don’t work here. You on the hook for everything, chiquito. It’s on _you_.” Carlos pats Rio’s cheek. Rio licks his lips. “You don’t get to cut deals and you don’t get to come here empty-handed—”

“I wasn’t empty-handed—”

In a sudden movement, Carlos jerks his hand so that the knife slices into Rio’s skin, creating a deep half-inch gash on his chin. A gasp escapes Rio’s lips and he goes to press his finger to the wound, only he sees Wifebeater and Skull Tat laughing on the couch, and he squares his shoulders, standing taller, letting the blood drip off his face, landing on his shoe and on Carlos’s dirty floor.

“What’s that saying?” Carlos asks, turning around to look at his boys. “Children should only speak when spoken to?”

Rio locks his jaw and tries to ignore the throbbing cut, forcing himself to keep his eyes on Carlos only.

“You’re just a kid,” Carlos says coldly, “a baby in this game. Remember your place, yeah?”

Rio just wants to go home. “Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.” 

“You’re gonna get a better system to protect my money, for one,” Carlos explains slowly, as if Rio needs time to catch up. “And you’re gonna go back to that kegger kid and revoke your deal, for two.”

Rio shouldn’t care—the deal was only cut so Rio could get an invite to the party, and now the party meant nothing, now he knew exactly how dangerous Elizabeth was to him—but the words of protest are out of his mouth before he knows what he’s doing: “If I do that, he’ll back out—”

“Then you better fuckin’ find a way to make sure he stays committed, huh?” Carlos reaches over to Rio and grabs his chin, his dirty thumb pressing into Rio’s stinging cut. He tilts Rio’s face up, studying it in the flickering light of the TV screen. “You’re a smart kid, yeah? I mean, your mamí’s always telling anyone who’ll listen that you’d get straight A’s if you just _applied_ yourself. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Rio tries to nod—as much as he can with his face held tight in Carlos’s grip, anyway.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“ _And_ you’re gonna figure out who robbed you. Make ‘em pay, so they know not to mess with my boys.”

Rio assents, figuring he’ll give it a few days, then come back with a fake name. 

“You’re off payroll ‘til you get it all sorted out. So make sure you got evidence, yeah?”

Carlos turns and steps away from Rio now, dropping his burning cigarette into a mostly-drained beer bottle.

“But—”

Carlos looks up sharply, brows raised. A warning. 

_It was only $50,_ Rio wants to say. 

_I don’t know who it was,_ he wants to lie.

“What if I never find them?”

“Then I guess you gonna have to figure out another way to earn back my trust.” Carlos flops back onto the couch, already pulling out another cigarette from the pack in his flannel pocket. “Right quick, too. After you pay me back—double.”

“How am I supposed to—?”

Wifebeater leans over and lights Carlos’s cigarette for him. 

“That ain’t my problem,” Carlos explains, exhaling a burst of smoke from his nose. It twists around his head. “My problem is little bitches like you thinkin’ they can get away with shit they can’t.”

Rio’s lip twitches. “Right.”

He idles there for a beat, trying to get his bearings.

“Street lights are already off, Rio. It’s past curfew. Get on home to mommy and daddy, yeah?”

Rio nods, stepping around the couch. When he pulls the front door open, he hears all of them laughing at him—mocking him. 

Shaking his head, he throws his hoodie up and steps out into the night. 

* * *

The light in the living room is on in his house, and Rio paces back and forth on the sidewalk, his heartbeat still beating too rapidly.

If Vanessa’s still in the living room, she’ll see the cut, and she’ll freak. She might even get his parents involved.

Rio wipes his chin with the sleeve of his hoodie, sees the wetness create a darker splotch on the black cotton. 

He wants to clean up, look at it in the mirror. God, he wants to go to sleep. 

After another ten minutes, Rio decides _fuck it._ He’ll play up being pissed off at her, storm past her on the couch, go straight to the bathroom, and then his bedroom. If he was fast, and if he put his hood up—

But when he gets into the foyer, he feels that the room is cold. Peeking around the corner, the orange chair is empty, Rio’s book set neatly on the side table. Vanessa had just left a light on for him so he wouldn’t stumble around in the dark. For some reason, it makes Rio’s throat feel tight. 

In the bathroom, Rio cleans up, wetting a paper towel he’d gotten from the kitchen. He didn’t want to use a towel—too much of a chance of his mom noticing the stain and asking questions. He wipes the blood smeared all over his chin, grimacing when he runs it over the cut. When he’s done, he throws it in the toilet and flushes so it won’t be found. Then he leans forward in the mirror, looking at the dark black scab that’s formed, long and skinny. 

It would be hard to hide. 

Too tired to do anything about it now, Rio tiptoes to his room and sheds all of his clothes, shoving them down to the bottom of his laundry basket so that nobody will see any blood if they happen to come in his bedroom. He throws on the pair of basketball shorts he’d folded this morning and left on his desk, and that’s when he sees it—the bracelet catching the light of his lamp and twinkling on his nightstand. 

Rio strides across the room and shoves the stupid thing in his drawer. He doesn’t want to see it.

Elizabeth had stolen from him, and he’d protected her, and he should feel noble, maybe, but all he feels is stupid.

He’d known—a girl like Elizabeth was dangerous. And it was his fault, because he hadn’t done a goddamn thing about it. 

* * *

**Friday, October 1st**

“Where were you in first per—hey, what happened to your face?” Elena asks when she walks up to Rio twisting the knob at his locker during lunch.

“Nothin’.”

“Well, _that’s_ an obvious lie. You’re hurt. Are you okay?”

“Would you just fuckin’ drop it, Elena? Not everything is your business. Leave it alone,” Rio snaps, slapping his hand against the metal so that Elena startles backwards.

Elena’s face crumples. “I was just worried—”

Rio sucks in a breath. “It’s nothin’,” he says, softer this time. “I promise. I’m fine.”

Elena nods, but he knows she doesn’t believe him. “As long as you’re okay…”

“I am.”

“Yo,” Mar says, suddenly appearing at Rio’s back. He doesn’t pick up on the tense mood as he bumps Rio aside to deposit his backpack in the locker. “You wanna do Bandito’s for lunch?”

“No,” Rio says sharply, thinking of Esta and the questions she will inevitably ask. 

“What’s your deal?” Mar asks, turning to look at Rio properly now. He pales. “Shit. What happened to your face?”

“Nothin’,” Rio says gruffly. 

“That’s all I could get out of him, too,” Elena says quietly. 

Around them, lockers slam shut and kids jostle and shove each other, making their way to the cafeteria and the parking lot. 

“You went to Carlos’s last night, didn’t you?” Mar asks.

Rio doesn’t say anything. Mar and Elena look at each other, frowning, and Elena wraps her arms around herself.

“Rio?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Rio says in a clipped voice. He leans against a neighboring locker and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. He is so over the day already. He shouldn’t have come to school at all, but he had deliveries—deliveries he’s now doing for _free_. “Let’s just talk about somethin’ else. Anythin’ else.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Rio swears he _feel_ them communicating silently beside him, each trying to push the other to come up with something to say.

“Uh—we gave Beth a ride home yesterday?” Mar tells Elena uncertainly. “It was… interesting.”

Rio pops open an eye and looks at Elena, the expression on her face caught somewhere between worry for him and excitement for details. Mar looks at Rio with hesitation, asking permission to continue. Rio just closes his eyes again. 

_At least this would get them off the subject of Carlos,_ Rio thinks, even if thinking about Elizabeth made something burn in his gut. 

“Well… you weren’t kidding,” Mar continues. “‘Loud’ is an understatement.”

“What happened?”

“Well, first, he practically had to drag her into the car—then he got all jealous and was asking about her boyfriend, and then _she_ got all jealous and was asking about Dylan. Then they were basically yelling at each other, but then they made sure to make plans for after school today?”

Rio emits a soft groan. He’d forgotten about tutoring today. 

“I’m _telling_ you, Rio—” 

“Drop it, Elena,” he warns, pinching his eyebrows. He really, _really_ wants to be left entirely alone. 

“She _likes_ you! She was jealous! This is good!”

 _No,_ Rio thinks. _It isn’t._ Not if she made him sloppy. 

“It’s obvious you like each other,” Elena criticizes. “You’re just being difficult for no reason—”

“Yep,” Mar agrees. “That’s Rio’s, like, entire personality.”

“I’ve never seen two people like each other so much and act this stupid over it,” Elena continues. “It’s—”

“Who?”

Rio’s eyes fly open. Just behind Elena are Dylan and Christa Maak, Dylan hopeful and curious, Christa utterly unimpressed. Rio sets his jaw.

“It’s just this TV show I watch,” Elena lies lamely. 

Christa rolls her eyes, but Dylan’s eyes brighten.

 _Shit,_ Rio thinks. She thinks Elena’s trying to cover up talking about _them,_ Rio and Dylan. 

“Anyway,” Dylan says, flouncing her hair. “Wanna go to lunch?”

Rio sucks his teeth, conflicted. On one hand, he’d rather be entirely alone. On the other, if he could get Dylan away from Christa, and if he could get her to ditch and then they drove over to the quarry—

“Oh, cool, you _are_ at school.”

Besides his eyes sliding towards the sound of the voice, Rio freezes. Elena and Mar exchange a nervous glance, and slowly, Rio turns his head over his shoulder to see Dean with his arm around Elizabeth. Elizabeth notices Rio’s scab immediately, and he sees her mind buzzing, sees that she wants to ask—but then her eyes quickly slot over to Dylan, and she slides her own arm under Dean’s backpack and grips him to her tighter. 

Movements carefully controlled, Rio raises an eyebrow in question.

“You weren’t in math so I wasn’t sure if you’d be here today,” Dean continues, oblivious. He starts digging in his pocket. “But we have your money and the details for the afterparty.”

“Afterparty?” Dylan asks, far too interested.

Rio watches Elizabeth’s fingers clench around Dean’s rib cage harder. Rio schools his face into a blank expression. 

“Yeah, after Homecoming,” Dean clarifies, pulling an envelope out of his pocket. 

“After _Homecoming_?” Dylan repeats. She smiles at Christa, who blows a bubble and then pops it noisily.

“Jesus,” Mar mutters quietly. Elena pinches him. 

“Anyway, here.” Dean presses the envelope into Rio’s hand.

Everyone’s looking at him expectantly, waiting for some sort of reaction or response or dismissal. Glancing in the envelope to double-check all the money is all there, Rio turns around to shove it in his locker.

_You’re gonna get a better system to protect my money, for one._

Reaching to unzip his backpack, Rio takes an extra beat to tuck the money deep in an inner pocket while he considers all of his options.

He could try to get Dean to cough up more right here—only they’re in the middle of the hallway, and besides Mar and Elena and Dylan and Christa, they were surrounded by other kids, not to mention teachers tucked in their classrooms and administrators wandering the halls, potentially around every corner. It wasn’t a smart move. 

He _could_ walk off with Dylan right now (if he didn’t want to deal with her trying to pry a Homecoming invite out of him) just to see Elizabeth’s face. She’s tense now, fronting hard, and Rio would like to see the mask slip, to return the favor for the way she’s wrapped herself around her dumbass boyfriend, but his nostrils flare, thinking about how then she would know she’d affected him.

Rio doesn’t want to be affected by her. He wants to be over her. 

_No, he_ is _over her,_ he thinks.

After last night, he _was_. She’d ruined _everything_ for him—now his sister had expectations, now his mother had questions, now he had a job and no money. He’d let her get away with it, yeah, but he couldn’t be entirely blamed for that. He was convinced that she _knew_ how to manipulate him—she _knew_ how to flutter those lashes and how to quiver that lip—

He thinks of her yesterday, the way she’d disappeared behind this curtain when Dean had asked her to pitch in money for the limo.

Rio doesn’t get it. She acted like money was this super-sensitive issue—but she had that house. She’d _laugh_ at his house, at the way his parents had too much old furniture but not enough space—at the toys strewn across the floor and the uncut grass and overgrown garden because nobody in the house had time to maintain it all. 

At worst, all Rio could imagine was that Elizabeth’s parents refused to spoil her like the rest of her friends. Maybe they were strict or maybe they were just down-to-earth and she’d just been influenced by all the people she’d glued herself to because she was dating Dean, but—

“We good?” Dean asks, breaking Rio’s thoughts.

Rio nods. “Yep.” Then he turns back to Dylan. “I got lunch detention.”

While Christa looks unconvinced, Dylan’s face falls. “Oh.”

“You do?” Mar asks, shocked. “And you’re going?”

Catching Rio’s drift, Elena says (a little too strongly), “He _has_ to, Mar. He doesn’t have a _choice_.”

Elizabeth catches Rio’s eye. She doesn’t buy it, either—and not only because she knows about his arrangement with Stewart. She can read him. Rio looks away, distracted by Mar scratching his head, trying to catch up. 

“Well,” Rio says, ready to walk away from all of them, to walk straight off-campus and out to the dugout or behind the modules or _anywhere_ where he could be alone. “See ya.” 

Grabbing his backpack because he isn’t about to leave all that money in his locker again, Rio nods at them. He’s not one step away when he feels a hand fly out to catch his arm.

Elizabeth’s fingers are locked around his wrist. An electric shock courses through his veins, and he swallows, feeling his heart patter faster.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, and then, repeatedly: _Get over her, get over her, get over her—_

“Your invite,” Elizabeth says, handing him a folded up piece of paper, face devoid of an expression Rio can read, “to the party.”

* * *

Maggie Bays and Melanie Pugh are occupying the dugout, lost in each other and oblivious to Rio’s accidentally rounding the corner on them. He slips away unnoticed, giving them privacy, and he treks across the grass to chill behind the modules, spending the lunch period stewing, sitting on the grass against the building and eating another orange. 

It’s Elizabeth’s handwriting on the invite, which he knows not only because it’s a girl’s handwriting, but because she’s got her trademark heart dotting the “i” (yeah, she’d labeled it “invite” and yeah, Rio had had to suck his lip into his mouth to stop himself smiling over it). 

He wonders if she overthought it, putting the heart there, the way he’s overthinking it now. He can imagine her going back and forth, rationalizing that he already knew it was part of her handwriting, but wondering if he might read too much into it. 

He doesn’t. He knows it means nothing but...

Between her demanding to know about his plans to ask Dylan to the dance yesterday and the way she’d just eyed Dylan in the hall, Rio knows now that Elizabeth _is_ jealous. 

The doubt that had tripped him up yesterday has disappeared—he knows she likes him, or at least he knows she craves his attention and doesn’t want to share it with anyone else, but beyond that—? 

Rio has no idea what she wants. 

_Not that it matters,_ Rio reminds himself, because he knows what _he_ wants. 

He wants—

He wants…

He wants nothing to do with her. 

He manages to convince himself of this by the time he’s walking to shop class after lunch, and then he pushes Elizabeth out of his mind, distracted by the sounds of saws grinding and soothed by the steady rhythm of hammering nails into wood. He’s fine—at least until he finds Todd Barnes at the bandsaw and slides him a baggie of weed. Then he remembers he won’t be seeing a dime of the money Todd pushes into Rio’s hand, and he’s pissed off all over again.

Rio adds the money to Dean’s envelope, wondering how the fuck he’s going to come up with $100 to pay back Carlos while he’s been cut off. 

He’ll have to upcharge, he figures while he waits in line for the table saw. He’s done it here and there before—like he did with Dean—mostly when he wasn’t keen on the person, when dealing with them felt like more trouble than the money was worth, but now he’ll have to do it with everyone—least until he figures out a way to get back on payroll. 

A way that doesn’t involve telling Carlos anything about Elizabeth. 

He _will_ deal with her, he promises himself as he slices boards into small pieces for the jewelry box he’s making his mother, because she deserved to pay for stealing from him—but she was _his_ to handle, not Carlos’s. After the knife incident, there was no way he was ever going to let Carlos even know she _existed._

Thinking of Carlos cutting him makes something in him burn furious, and he carries this feeling with him into sixth period gym class. 

Rio dresses down and throws his backpack into his gym locker after he deposits another baggie of weed into his shorts, prepared to do a handoff with Isaiah Acevas during the double-gym stair laps, where students were forced to run around the main gym, up the stairs to the auxiliary gym, and back down an opposite set of stairs that fed back into the main gym. Coach Budrow always spent the duration of the class timing people under the basketball hoop, which meant Rio and Isaiah could duck behind the wrestling mats in the aux gym to do the exchange without anyone noticing if they slipped in and out of the rotation at the exact right time. 

Rio nods at Isaiah early into the run, pulling him off-course and behind the mats, because he wants to get it over with. He’s jittery with energy and since he hadn’t gotten to take Dylan to the quarry like he’d briefly entertained at lunch, now he wants to go hard during the laps to burn off his frustration. 

It mostly works. 

After class, Rio’s drenched with sweat and breathing hard, his muscles aching. It feels good. Not as good as the other thing—but still, it’s good enough. 

At least it is until he opens up his gym locker and digs the envelope out of his backpack to add Isaiah’s payment to the stash—because he can tell, immediately, that money is missing. 

Not _all_ of it, but enough for him to feel that the envelope is lighter, enough for his fury to instantly spark and reignite, enough for Rio to clench his fist and slam it against the metal lockers so that every boy in his vicinity whips their head around and stares at him. 

Rio ignores them all, angrily stalking out of the locker room without changing back into his usual clothes. He beelines to the science hall, finding Dylan coming out of zoology, surprised to see him waiting for her. 

“Wanna ditch?”

She smiles at him, nodding and eager.

And it’s the wrong move, he knows it is before he does it—but it feels nice, the way she’s looking at him—so Rio kisses her, there in the hall, in front of everyone, one hand squeezing her hip and one cupping her cheek. Dylan responds just as enthusiastically—sliding her hands up Rio’s neck. 

“Get a room!” someone calls. 

“Leave room for Jesus!” another kid shouts. 

But it isn’t until they hear the unmistakable throat-clearing of a teacher that they break away. They tolerate a lecture on PDA for thirty seconds, and then they slink off to Rio’s car, holding hands. 

* * *

Sated, his anger resettled to a low boil, Rio sits in the library after school, waiting to confront Elizabeth. He knows it was her, knows she used her TA period to look up his gym locker code and to sneak into the boys’ locker room when everybody was in class.

She was good, but not good enough, and Rio can’t wait to wipe the look he knows she’ll be wearing off her face.

Only five minutes after the bell has rung, he wonders if she’s not coming. She’s usually so punctual, but maybe she was less confident this time, maybe she didn’t think she could pull off the same act, pretending she didn’t know anything about it. Or maybe she just wanted to pay him back.

Impatient to know for certain, Rio swings his backpack back over his shoulder and makes for the bus turnaround, seeing if she’s trying to slip out of his grasp for the weekend. 

He spots her immediately, standing next to her friend Ruby at the back of the line. 

Rio approaches, but stops behind them when he hears their conversation. 

“Are you sure you want to go dress shopping tomorrow?” Ruby asks uncertainly. “Like, I don’t want to stress you out trying to get the money from your mom—I can wait until next weekend.”

“No, it should be fine,” Elizabeth responds, and Rio clenches his jaw, because of course she would say that with his money burning a hole in her pocket. Rio opens his mouth to cut in, to say just that—but then Elizabeth says, “It’s the first, so she just got her unemployment check today. It’s the best time to ask, really.”

 _Unemployment check?_ Rio hesitates. _But—_

He shakes his head.

 _No, it didn’t matter,_ he thinks. She _stole_ from him. _Again._ To go to a dance with _Dean_. To pay for Dean’s stupid limo, to pay for a dress she could wear for _him_. 

The line moves forward, and then Elizabeth says, thumbing behind her shoulder, “I gotta go to tutoring now, but I’ll come over with Annie in the morning? You don’t mind if she comes shopping, right?”

“No, that’s cool,” Ruby promises. “It’ll be fun!”

Rio considers trying to disappear before Elizabeth spots him eavesdropping, but he’s not quick enough. When she spins around, she gapes, startled to see him.

She burns red from head to toe. “I didn’t—”

The words are out of Rio’s mouth before he realizes he’s saying them. “Was wonderin’ if you just forgot our appointment, or if you just didn’t care.”

“No, I just—” She glances at Ruby, who squints at Rio, defensive, not realizing he’s quoting Elizabeth. “I just had to settle some plans with Ruby. I—”

 _Confront her,_ he tells himself. _Now._

He can see it in her eyes, the way she’s trying to work out how much he heard. The curtain’s closing back over her face, something for her to hide behind. 

_Who cares?_ he thinks. _Do it. Say something._

“Should we…?” Elizabeth asks awkwardly, gesturing back toward the school, trying to shuffle him back to the library. 

_Just open your mouth. Just say it._

He doesn’t. 

“Yeah,” he says instead. 

He fucking hates himself.

* * *

They walk in silence to the library, the hallways mostly cleared out now, and the only sounds are the clicks of teachers’ heels against the floor and the bang of the doors slamming shut as stragglers exit the building. Rio could swear though that the vibrating hum of the electricity coursing through his body is audible, it’s radiating with such a high frequency.

She makes him feel—she makes him feel—

 _That’s it,_ he thinks. 

She makes him _feel,_ period, in a way no other girl has.

Rio had tried to muster up something for Dylan while he lay panting on top of her in the backseat of his car an hour ago, and he couldn’t do it. He liked her fine, it was just—he could walk away from her, after. 

He could drop her off at her eighth period French class, he could let her kiss him outside the doorway, and thirty seconds later, his mind was blank; she was forgotten.

( _Elena’s right,_ he thinks, chewing his tongue. _He needs to end it._ )

But Elizabeth was impossible to forget. She clouded his thoughts at random times—when he was in the shower, or just before he fell asleep, sure, but not just then. He’d been idly sketching in his bedroom two nights ago when he’d remembered her blathering on about the book, and then, unable to stop thinking about it, he’d picked it up. And the other day, he’d heard this song on the radio— _The Nearness of You_ —and he’d thought of her, just because of a line about a pale moon (only then he’d _kept_ thinking about her, the longer the lyrics went on, until he was agitated and shut the radio off entirely). 

“Are you alright?” Elizabeth hazards when they fall into the chairs in the library.

Rio can feel himself scowling, and he doesn’t bother to change his expression even as he says, “Yep.”

It takes him a second to realize she’s not asking about his emotional state, though. When he looks at her, he sees her staring at the scab on his chin. 

“What happened?”

He stares at her, stony-faced, considering what it would be like to tell her. It’s the entry point he needs to start the conversation—it’s perfect. All he has to do is say the words, not chicken out this time.

 _Let her deal with the feelings,_ he thinks.

“Consequences of the job,” Rio says. He doesn’t look away from her.

“What job?”

Rio levels a look at her like, _You know._

“Oh,” she says, and something like worry washes over her face. 

She hesitates, then reaches out to touch his chin. It’s stupid—it’s so stupid—but he lets her. Her fingers brush his skin, and Rio’s lips part, staring at her. She’s careful not to touch the scab, but she tips his chin up, so she can get a good look. 

“Are you okay?” Elizabeth asks quietly. “It looks deep.”

He wants to admit that he’s not, that he’s still a little shaken from seeing Carlos turn on him like that, that the knife splitting open his skin _hurt_. He wants to confess that he’s angry that he was treated like a dumb kid when he’d tried to do everything right—that it was unfair, and that it was _her_ fault. 

“Yeah,” he breathes. 

“What—” she swallows, steeling herself, like she’s already guessed the answer, “—what happened?”

 _If she stopped touching his face, he could tell her,_ he thinks. 

If he didn’t feel her hands on his skin, he could do it. He could pass the hurt to her. He could let her hold it, live with it. He could let it touch her in a way it never would, not with her tucked away in that big old house with the perfectly manicured garden and the tire swing hanging off a sturdy tree branch in the front yard, miles away from the wrong side of the tracks. 

He stares at her, trying to figure her out: the shame he sees her hide away, the fragility she masks. The secrets: the lying, the stealing, the unemployment checks. 

If she didn’t live in that house, so much more about her would make sense. It was the only detail tripping him up now, but every day he drove her there and dropped her off and watched her walk through that door, so—

Rio blinks. 

Or… _had_ he ever watched her walk through that door?

No, he realizes. She always stood on the patch of grass and watched him drive away. Even yesterday, when she was furious with him. 

Rio opens his mouth—to say what, he isn’t quite sure, when suddenly Elizabeth drops his chin and she scoots her chair back, tucking her hair behind her ear. Rio’s eyebrow twitches in confusion—and then he hears him, noisy, boisterous as always: Dean.

It was starting to seem like he’d show up at every tutoring session.

Rio wonders if he’s jealous. He was oblivious, most of the time, but maybe he could tell. 

_In the library, she’s just as wrapped up in you as you are in her._

“Hi,” Elizabeth says timidly, like she’s not sure what Dean has just seen. She looks at Rio for his reaction, but he’s blank. 

“Hey, babe.” Dean leans down and captures Elizabeth’s mouth with his. Startled, Elizabeth keeps her eyes open. Rio forces himself not to look away. When Dean parts from her, she absently rubs his kiss off her lips. 

_She just jumped about three feet away from her boyfriend the second she saw you._

“What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to double-check that you’re coming to my game tonight?”

“Of course,” Elizabeth promises, but she glances at Rio.

“Cool,” Dean says, smiling goofily.

“Is that it?” Elizabeth asks, impatience at the edge of her voice. 

Dean looks between Elizabeth and Rio. 

Elizabeth catches it, apologizes without apologizing. “It’s just—I really need to study for the quiz on Monday—”

“It doesn’t look like you’ve started yet,” Dean says, noticing that their backpacks are still zipped, their books tucked away.

“Right. We’re behind—I was late. I walked Ruby to the bus so we could talk about shopping for Homecoming dresses tomorrow.”

This distracts him, and Dean abandons his line of questioning. “Get a cool color, okay? I don’t want, like, a pink tie or something gay.”

“ _Dean_ ,” Elizabeth hisses. “Don’t be like that.”

“Whatever, it was just a joke,” Dean says dismissively. He turns to Rio. “So, since you’re coming to the party, are you just gonna bring all the stuff along with you, or should we do an exchange beforehand?”

“Yeah, about that,” Rio says slowly. “Change of plans.”

Sensing danger, Elizabeth’s eyes widen.

“Uh, okay—” Dean says, not catching on. “You don’t wanna come to the party? That’s fine.” He sounds a little relieved, which Rio finds annoying.

“Nah, I’m comin’,” Rio promises, because maybe he _does_ want to see Elizabeth all dressed up, and maybe he _does_ want to see her squirm the way she does every time him and Dean are in the same room. “But we got a pricing problem.”

“What…? What do you mean? We’ve already paid—”

“Prices went up.”

Dumbfounded, Dean’s face gets all twitchy. “How much?”

Rio gives him a number—higher even than the original price. Elizabeth freezes, caught uncomfortably in the middle.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Dean hisses. “You said you’d cut me a deal.”

Rio shrugs. “Deal’s off.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I said so.”

“You can’t do that. Beth, tell him—he can’t do that.”

Elizabeth opens her mouth, but she’s speechless. Rio barks out a laugh. 

“I think it’s time to teach you a li’l lesson,” Rio says, leaning back in his chair, the image of cool and unbothered. “See, there’s a distribution system. You want the product, and I got it. _You_ don’t get to cut deals. You play by _my_ rules.”

“Or what?” Dean challenges.

“Or you leave empty-handed,” Rio says, tilting his head and looking at Dean with a look of amused pity. “I won’t deliver.”

“I want a refund, then.”

Rio tips his head back and laughs. Loud.

“No.”

“Then you can’t come to the party,” Dean threatens.

“Pretty sure I got all the details already, thanks to your girlfriend,” Rio says, nodding at Elizabeth, a smile playing at the edge of his mouth. She purses her lips, blushing. 

“I don’t care. You can’t come.”

“What are you gonna do? Call the cops?” Rio leans forward, putting his elbows on the table linking his fingers, then using them to prop up his chin. He grins. “Have ‘em raid your own party?”

A vein on Dean’s forehead bulges. “Beth–” he demands. “Let’s go.”

“Go _where_?” 

“We’re leaving.” 

Dean starts walking away. Elizabeth doesn’t move.

Noticing he’s alone, Dean whips back around. “Beth?”

“Dean!”

Dean glares at her. “Are you coming or not?”

“I—” Elizabeth looks between Rio and her boyfriend. Rio watches her, waiting, seeing what she’ll do. “You need to go to warm-ups.”

“So?”

“So… I need Rio to give me a ride home.” Elizabeth casts her eyes down, avoiding looking at either boy as she says it. 

Dean gapes. “Don’t go home. Just come to my game. I’ll give you a ride home after.”

“You know I need to go home. I need to get Annie first.”

Rio slots another puzzle piece into the frame, letting it click into place among his other evidence.

“You’re seriously staying with him right now?”

“You’re not exactly giving me a choice, Dean.”

Dean scowls. “Don’t come to my game.”

“Dean—”

But he slams out of the library, and the only sound is the loud squeak of the door hinge and then the bang of the door falling into the frame.

“You need to tell him to stop doing that,” Ms. Colte calls over to them. 

Elizabeth flushes red. Rio just stares at her, caught between annoyed and impressed.

* * *

“You didn’t have to do that,” Elizabeth says quietly when they’re in his car. Ms. Colte had kicked them both out of the library for causing a disturbance—which, slightly unfair, Rio thought—and he was taking her home now, the tutoring session canceled.

“No?”

“No.”

Rio hums. “You didn’t have to choose me over your boyfriend.”

“That isn’t—that’s not how I would put it.”

“It’s how I would put it. You’re in my car right now, ain’t you?” 

They’re at a red light. Rio turns away from her, studying the cars darting across the intersection.

“Logistics,” Elizabeth huffs.

Rio purses his lips. “Yeah, gotta grab your sister and drag her to a freezin’ cold three-hour football game, huh?”

 _And tomorrow—dress shopping,_ he thinks. And then he thinks about her face falling when he’d called her mother Mrs. Cleaver, about how she’d mentioned that she cooks for her family. 

He doesn’t say it, but the question is there: _Where are your parents?_ He doesn’t even need to look at her to know that she’s glaring at him.

She doesn’t correct him about being uninvited from the game. 

“Why are you so—” She loses her wording briefly, flustered, “—so _determined_ to driving me crazy?”

“I’m not,” Rio protests, putting his foot to the gas as the light turns green. “You’re just easy to rile up.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Yeah, well, the way I understand it, you like assholes.”

Elizabeth recoils. “I thought you ‘didn’t care about him at all,’” she says, fingers bent in mocking air quotes.

“Maybe I just think you deserve better.”

He feels Elizabeth freeze next to him more than he sees it. He looks out his window.

“Like you?”

Rio feels his heart pounding. He shifts in his seat, his left leg bouncing wildly.

“Lying to your girlfriend about having lunch detention because you didn’t want to tell her about a party that you _stole_ an invitation to—”

Rio sucks in a breath, turning onto Elizabeth’s street. 

“You think you got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I do,” Elizabeth spits as he pulls up to her house. “You like picking apart other people’s relationships to avoid looking at the problems in yours.”

Rio huffs out a short laugh. “Okay.”

“You got a better explanation?”

“Nope,” Rio says nonchalantly as Elizabeth starts unbuckling herself. “That’s me. A liar and a thief and a bad boyfriend, too. You put all the pieces together real good, darlin’.”

Elizabeth pinkens, scowling at him.

“Well, glad we sorted that out,” she snaps, pushing the car door open and yanking her backpack off the floor before slamming the door shut. 

Rio chuckles, leaning back in his seat, car idling as he watches her walk up to the house. She’s halfway to the door when she turns around and looks at him, an angry question in her eyes. 

Reaching over to roll down the window, Rio calls, “What’s wrong, darlin'?”

“What are you doing?”

“Just makin’ sure you get into your house safe,” Rio says, faux innocent. 

“Just go,” Elizabeth demands. “I’m _fine._ ”

He sniffs. “Tryin’ to be less of an asshole, you know. Heard this is what nice guys do.” 

Elizabeth stares him down, challenging, but he sees it, the moment she realizes that he’s figured it out: he doesn’t think she lives in this house. He doesn’t know what her life’s really like, but he thinks that all of this? It’s a charade. 

“And you’ve just decided to turn over a leaf now? Today?”

“Let’s just say I’m feelin’... inspired. Surroundin’ myself with good influences and all that.” He cocks his head, smiles pretty at her. 

Elizabeth’s tempted to stamp her foot, he’s pretty sure, but she holds back, whipping around and thrusting her shoulders back to finish making her way to the door. Rio watches, anticipation building, wondering what she’s going to do. 

She climbs the steps and when her fingers are on the door handle, she looks back at him. Rio leans closer, watching closely. She throws her head back, looking at the sky. Then, miraculously, she pushes the door open and disappears, swallowed by the house.

Rio sets his jaw.

It didn’t make _sense._

He thought he’d figured it out. He was _sure_. 

He waits a couple more beats and then, defeated, he shakes his head and peels away from the house, furious that she’s gotten one over on him _again._  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO many beautiful people were godsends in helping me with this chapter.
> 
> ms_scarlet let me babble about it to her incessantly, and this chapter was beta'ed by septiembur, who provided much-needed feedback and encouragement and plotting help, and flashindie, who made this chapter work after I wanted to burn it all down (seriously—it wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her, and it wouldn't be nearly as good without her advice and analysis). i am so thankful for everyone's help—including all the people who suffered me complaining and angsting over it! i appreciate you all so much!!! mwah. 
> 
> this is the longest thing I've ever written, and this chapter challenged me in SO many ways, so I hope you liked the final product! 
> 
> if you feel inclined, i'd love to know what your favorite parts are! :)


	8. Friday, October 1st-Thursday, October 7th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth goes the extra mile to protect a secret; Homecoming shopping with Ruby ends up more dramatic than either of them expect; Beth tries to fix things with Dean only to discover something new about Rio; tensions rise between Beth and Christa; Dean comes up with a plan to pay Rio back for upcharging him; Rio calls Beth out on a lie.

**Friday, October 1st**

Beth’s heart thunders in her chest like a wild animal thrashing against the bars of a cage. Behind her, the hum of Rio’s idling engine pushes her forward and up the steps of the house. She can feel his eyes burning at her back. When she gets to the door, Beth squeezes her eyes shut, points her face to the sky, and _pleads_ with the universe to let her have this one single thing. The thought that it might all end here, now, like _this_? It’s unbearable. 

She presses her thumb down on the latch. 

Waiting for the _click_ that signifies that the deadbolt is in place, she's surprised when—miraculously—she instead feels the smooth shift of the lock mechanism twisting inside the handle. 

For a moment, she’s stuck between two horrible alternatives: getting caught by Rio or getting caught by whoever must be on the other side of the unlocked door. Then, she shakes her head, sucks in a breath, and nudges the door open to step blindly over the threshold. 

Hands pressed behind her back, she slumps against the door, stumbling a bit when it slots back into place with a puff of air. 

She’s in. 

Beth blinks her eyes open, exhaling a shaky breath. She can’t believe it _worked_ , she thinks, and then just as quickly—she can’t believe she just _broke into someone’s house._

Her eyes dart and scan over her surroundings, from the rich oak floors to the dining room to her left and the den to her right. The lights are off. Nobody’s around. Blissfully, the dream house appears empty. 

Through the long skinny windows on either side of the front door, sunlight streams into the foyer, catching on some silver picture frames on an entryway table that holds a corded telephone. There’s a plush rug leading to the L-shaped staircase at the end of the long hallway she’s in. Peering around the corner into the den, she spies fresh pink flowers in a vase on a side table, a handmade knitted throw blanket over the back of a cream armchair, and an open-faced book turned upside down on the coffee table, saving someone’s place. Somewhere, she can smell a candle burning, something subtle and sweet. Vanilla, maybe.

The house is lived in. _Loved_ in. That warmth wraps itself around Beth’s shoulders, and, thinking of the dark, mostly windowless interior of her sparse and barren apartment, it strikes Beth how quickly that feeling has become unfamiliar. 

Or... maybe quickly isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s _thoroughly_. Because even when her dad was still around five months ago, the house had felt cold, bigger than it needed to be, with too much space for the stilted silences to balloon out, waiting to be popped with the sharp needle of her mother’s meltdowns or her father’s rebukes.

And three months ago, she may have lived in a house that looked something like this one, but it didn’t _feel_ like this one. Not with her mother locked up in her room, not with items disappearing, sold off in meaningless attempts to keep the roof over their heads as they waited—futilely—for Beth’s father to come home. 

(Still, Beth had left the porch light on every night, hoping, maybe, that it would light his way if he decided to slip back into their lives the way that he had slipped out—in the dark, not bothering to wake anyone up.) 

One day, he was there, the next he was gone, and then, much later, she came back from school to find that he’d cleared out most of his things, his office left with a gaping hole where his solid oak desk used to be. 

Whenever she thinks about it, she remembers how when she was little, he used to let her play his secretary while he worked at home on the weekends. She’d scribble made-up notes on post-its and stick them on his telephone, and he would give her the important task of delivering him his coffee, prepared by her mother (when her mother still prepared things). 

When she finally worked up the will to go into his office to see what he’d left behind, there was a thin layer of dust coating the books he didn’t seem to want anymore. The dam inside of her burst. She’d thrown one of his old college textbooks—a heavy, leather bound business tome, useless to any of them—straight through the window, the glass shattering and exploding with a violence that should’ve roused her mother, but didn’t. Beth had patched up the hole with some plastic and duct tape alone, and Debbie had never said a word. 

There was a time where it didn’t feel like that, she thinks, but it’s hazy—long enough ago that Annie doesn’t remember it, has never lived it. 

Feeling a prickle of tears, Beth swipes at her eyes. She wants to get out of this house. Pressing her ear to the door, she tries to hear if Rio’s still outside. It’s quiet—but Beth’s not sure if that’s because he’s gone, or if it’s because he’s too far away, his car at the curb at the end of the driveway. She considers peeking through the window, but she doesn’t want to risk it. He was clearly determined to call her on her lie, a spider waiting patiently for her to fly straight into his web. 

It was _crazy_ , walking into this house. She _knows_ he knows; she knows he’s figured it out—figured out all of Beth’s broken pieces, pasted them together to see the full picture in a way she was trying, desperately, to hide. It was stupid to think she could still pull one over on him, but still, her feet had carried her forward. 

She couldn’t bear the thought of the way his eyes—usually dark and warm—would turn hard, judgmental, once he knew he was right.

And he would judge her, wouldn’t he? Not because she was poor—she wasn’t worried about that, at least not in the way she was worried about it with Dean and his friends—but he’d realize she was everything he wasn’t: an image-obsessed insecure _brat_. Exactly like her mother had said when Beth had cried over the peeling paint and stench of smoke that clung to the walls of the apartment when they’d moved in at the beginning of the school year, once they’d lost the house. 

But Rio? Rio didn’t care what people thought of him. It was what she admired most about him. He did _what_ he wanted _when_ he wanted and there was something about him that made Beth believe she could do that, too. She didn’t have to shrink herself around him. She could be wild, sharp around the edges, and that felt _good._

What would a boy like that think of a girl like her? Breaking into a house just so that he would think that she was someone she wasn’t?

Beth could never tell him the truth. She couldn’t tell him about the empty bottles littering her mother’s bedroom floor, or about how she’d had to forge Debbie’s signature on all Annie’s school forms, or about how the whole reason he was tutoring her was because she’d fallen behind when Annie had gotten the flu and Beth had to stay home to take care of her—not that she wouldn’t have fallen behind anyway, considering half the time in math class, she was so hungry that she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t tell him about how she had to steal her mother’s car just to stock up on groceries, how she’d had to hide the food underneath her bed to make it last, how the only reason she’d been able to do any of that in the first place was because she’d stolen—from _him._

He’d never look at her again.

But that fear was nothing in comparison to the fear of someone finding out and reporting their mother. That fear had claws, and they were sunk so deeply into Beth’s heart that sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night gasping for breath. The only way she could fall back asleep was to crawl out of her bed and into Annie’s, curling around the five-year-old on her tiny mattress, soothed by her steady breaths—or, as was becoming more common lately—the sound of Annie sucking on her thumb, the habit having spontaneously reared its ugly head again. 

Sometimes though, even that didn’t work. The worry that she might get separated from Annie was so palpable that her heart raced the entire rest of the night. She’d just stare at the shapes in the popcorn ceiling above Annie’s bed dimly illuminated by a distant yellow street light outside her window, exhausted, the nightmare playing on repeat in her head that one day she might walk through the door and Annie’s ratty pair of sneakers would be missing from the spot by the front door where she always kicked them off. Beth would look for her in her room, but that would be empty, too. She’d look under the bed, in the closet, behind the shower curtain, her panic rising like bile in the back of her throat. Then, out of seemingly nowhere, a woman in a frumpy gray suit would appear, smiling condescendingly as she patted Beth’s shoulder and promised her that Annie was being taken care of now, that she was _safe._

No, she would never tell Rio. Nobody could know. It was bad enough that Ruby was always trying to prod Beth into telling a counselor, or to applying for free and reduced lunch. But she didn’t want to be on anyone’s radar. She wanted to be invisible. And most of the time she was, except—

Except not to Rio.

She swallows thickly, tugging at the collar of her button-up, feeling suddenly stifled and warm.

Then, abruptly, the peal of a telephone punctures the silence, and Beth jumps, her heart leaping into her throat. Upstairs, she hears a thump and then—far too quickly—the unmistakable sound of feet clamoring down the top steps above. 

Someone was making their way to the telephone—the telephone sitting less than three feet away from her.

Beth glimpses a set of lime green socks hit the landing—

Wrenching open the door, Beth spills out onto the porch and then the lawn, practically stumbling in her eagerness to get as far away as possible. 

Rio’s car is gone, the street empty. 

She's gotten away with it—for now. 

* * *

**Saturday, October 2nd**

“I want Cocoa Puffs,” Annie whines the next morning, balancing her head on one hand, her palm scrunching her cheek up to her eyeball while she uses her other hand to scoop oatmeal onto her spoon. It doesn’t last. As soon as the spoon is full, she plops it back down into the bowl. 

“We’re out of Cocoa Puffs,” Beth explains as she tries to twist Annie’s hair into a braid, thinking distantly that they probably won’t have sugary cereal again for months. 

Annie lets out an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t _like_ oatmeal.”

“Just try it. It’s yummy!”

“No.”

“Annie,” Beth warns, yanking her hair a bit too hard so that Annie hisses. 

“Eat your oatmeal,” Beth pushes gently, apologizing by running her fingers softly over Annie’s baby hair flyaways on her forehead. “I don’t want you to get hungry at the mall, okay?” 

She says it nonchalantly, but Annie _couldn’t_ get hungry at the mall. Beth had $20 in her pocket to find a dress because—although the thought had flickered in her mind while she was rifling through the envelope tucked into Rio’s backpack—she couldn’t bear to take a cent more than she needed from him. 

“There’s a McDonald’s in the food court,” Annie suggests hopefully as she slyly pushes her bowl away from her body with a single finger.

Reaching over Annie’s shoulder, Beth grips the bowl and slides it right back into place. Pulling out her grown-up voice, Beth scolds her. “Annie, eat your breakfast. _Now._ Or you’re staying here.”

It’s an empty threat, but Annie hasn’t figured that out yet.

Finishing off the braid with a baby blue scrunchie, Beth plops down beside Annie at the table, leveling her with a focused stare and folding her hands in front of her on the table like she means business. Annie scowls. 

“Well?”

With extraordinary drama, Annie puts the smallest amount of oatmeal possible on her spoon, and then she slowly inches it towards her mouth, grimacing. She sniffs, sticking her tongue out, and then when she finally puts the spoon in her mouth, her face crumples. She smacks her lips, chewing the miniscule bite. 

Beth tries to shake her head in disappointment, but she can’t help it. She laughs. 

“It is _not_ that bad.”

“Is so,” Annie argues. Under her breath, she mutters, “It tastes like sawdust.”

“Oh? Since when do you know what sawdust tastes like? Are you eating sawdust now?” Beth asks, reaching forward to tickle Annie’s belly. “A tasty afternoon snack?”

Curling in half, trying to wiggle away from Beth, Annie bursts into giggles. “No! That’s gross!”

“You’re the one eating it!” Beth teases. “You know what it tastes like!”

“No! No!” Annie shrieks, laughing louder as Beth pokes at her bellybutton.

There’s a creak in the floorboards, and Beth and Annie both look up, startled to see Debbie padding into the kitchen in her wrinkled gray robe. Her hair sits in a messy bun low on her neck, there are bags under her eyes, and at the corner of her mouth is a small white smudge where drool has dried into a crust. 

“Sorry,” Beth says quickly, dropping her hands. “I didn’t realize we were being so loud.”

Annie glances nervously between Beth and Debbie. She tucks her hands under her thighs. 

Debbie waves a hand dismissively, turning away from them to open the fridge.

“It’s fine. I was up.”

The low hum of the fridge is the only noise in the room. Staring at a deep scratch in the wood of the table—an ugly, wobbly thing they’d had to find at the second-hand store after Debbie had sold their Ethan Allen dining room set—Beth casts about for something to say, but comes up with nothing. At the best of times, Debbie was unpredictable, and Beth never knew where the landmines were hidden. 

“All out of Cocoa Puffs?” Debbie asks, checking the top of the fridge where they’d kept the box before Beth had taken out the garbage and recycling yesterday on her way to the bus stop. 

“All out,” Beth confirms quietly. Annie shifts in her seat, and Beth puts a calming hand on her elbow. 

Debbie bends over and starts digging around the contents of the fridge, as if the shelves aren’t so empty that she can’t see everything in perfect detail. 

“No eggs, either?”

“You can have my oatmeal.” Annie shrugs, eyes wide and lips pouting, as if it’s an idea she’s just come up with.

“Annie, no. Come on. You need to eat before we go. Ruby’s going to be here any minute—” 

“You’re bringing her to hang out with Ruby?” Debbie cuts in, scratching at her neck beneath a tangled bun. “You don’t have to do that.”

The words spill out of Beth’s mouth before she can take them back: “Yes I do.” 

She freezes, and her breath gets caught in her throat. Turning sharply, Debbie’s eyes narrow. 

“Annie can stay here with me.”

“I know,” Beth says quickly, trying to make it sound like she means it, trying to make Debbie forget what she’s just said. “I just mean—no, it’s okay. I can take her. It’s not a problem.”

But it is—because Debbie’s studying Beth, her gaze loaded like a nocked arrow in a bow, and Beth’s bracing for impact. 

She broke the rules, the only ones that mattered: say nothing. Pretend everything is fine.

The silence stretches, heavy and suffocating, and it takes everything in Beth not to look away, not to glance at Annie, to double check she’s alright. 

But she couldn’t back down. She wasn’t going to let Annie be punished for her mistake. 

“We really don’t mind bringing her,” Beth insists, but her voice cracks, betraying her. 

“There’s no reason to take her when I’m going to be home,” Debbie says, carefully enunciating every word. “She’ll have more fun watching the dinosaur show, anyway.”

No, Beth thinks, remembering the last time that she’d left Annie behind when she went to Dean’s—how she’d come home to the light from the TV flickering in the darkened living room, the crash of cartoon anvils falling from the sky the only sound in the emptiness. When she’d switched on the light, she saw a puddle of milk seeping into the edge of the carpet that split the kitchen and the living room, the empty gallon tipped over and abandoned on the tile floor. She’d found Debbie passed out on her mattress next to a pile of wrinkled clothes, and she’d found Annie hiding in her closet, head tucked between her legs. “I was hungry,” Annie had mumbled miserably before she’d buried her tear-stained face in Beth’s neck. “I thought I was strong enough to pour the milk by myself.”

Now Debbie wanted to pretend that Beth didn’t need to worry about her sister? That Beth wouldn’t go to the mall and have Annie at the back of her mind like she did every minute of every day? That she didn't sit in Chemistry and wonder if Annie’s stomach was growling during snack time while her friends opened their lunch boxes and pulled out crackers and string cheese? That Beth didn’t patch up Annie’s jeans in Home Ec and worry about teachers wondering about the frayed hems and worn-out knees? That while she sat in darkened movie theaters with Dean, she didn’t think about Annie perched precariously on the back of the couch, three seconds away from a broken arm or a cracked skull?

“They’re turtles,” Beth corrects quietly. 

Looking between the two of them, Annie fidgets, kicking her legs back and forth underneath the table. 

Debbie’s lips thin into a flat line.

“Annie can make her _own_ decisions,” Debbie says, voice like sugar at the edge of a razor blade. “Annie, baby, what do _you_ want to do?”

“She’s five,” Beth retorts, cheeks going hot.

“Well?” Debbie presses Annie, arms crossed and eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer. 

The silence is painful. Annie doesn’t look at Debbie, but she doesn’t look at Beth either, choosing instead to stare at the bowl of oatmeal in front of her. Under the table, Beth sets two fingers on Annie’s knee. She stops kicking, glancing up at Beth, her thick eyebrows knitted. 

“What do you want to do? Do you want to stay with Mom, or do you want to come with me?” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Beth sees Debbie impatiently shift her weight from one leg to the other, and the floorboards whine under her feet. Beth ignores it.

“Whatever you want to do,” Beth prods softly. “Okay?”

“I want to come with you,” Annie says finally, pulling her bowl closer and swirling her spoon through the hardening oatmeal.

Beth feels the tension eke out of her body—but the cord pulls tight again when suddenly Debbie snaps, “Goddammit—I know I taught you better than to play with your fucking food.”

“I—” Annie starts, but Debbie snatches the bowl out of Annie’s hands, dropping it into the sink with a harsh flick of her wrist, the ceramic clattering against the metal. The sound travels like electricity up Beth’s spine, setting her teeth on edge. 

Then, with a swirl of her robe, Debbie storms out of the room.

“Come on. Let’s wait outside,” Beth says quickly, seeing Annie’s glassy eyes. 

Although Annie’s a bit too heavy for Beth to do this easily anymore, she reaches down to pick her up. Annie scrambles to wrap her legs around Beth’s waist and tucks her head into Beth’s shoulder.

“Did I do something bad?” Annie whispers when Beth slides her hand into her jeans pockets, double-checking that she’s got her money.

Beth feels the crinkled note between her fingers.

“Impossible,” Beth reassures her. “How could you ever do something bad with this face?”

Beth takes her hand out of her pocket and pinches Annie’s cheek. Annie’s face cracks into a smile, and Beth doesn’t look back when she walks out of the apartment to wait with Annie at the bottom of the cement staircase for Mrs. Johnson and Ruby to pick them up.

* * *

The dull sound of Ruby and her mother chattering away happily in the front seat does nothing to soothe Beth as she stares out a backseat window, barely registering the burst of orange and red leaves on the trees that flash by on their way to the mall. There’s a gnawing in the pit of her stomach, and all she can see in her mind is her mother tearing out of the kitchen, angry at Annie for choosing Beth, angry at Beth for being chosen. And she’s not just rattled by her encounter with Debbie this morning. Yesterday, Dean had uninvited her to his game, and then he hadn’t called her before bed like usual. Beth had thought about calling him herself, but she didn’t know what to say.

Rio’s words echo in her head. _You didn’t have to choose me over your boyfriend._

That wasn’t how she had meant it to look, but that’s how Rio had taken it—and Dean had, too, storming out of the library. Beth hadn’t wanted to leave—but it wasn’t like _that_. It’s just Rio had missed tutoring the day prior, and the time before that, Dean had humiliated her asking about the money for the limo, and she’d been too distracted to focus on Rio’s explanation of the Remainder Theorem, accidentally spending her time focusing on his hands as he copied down equations in his chicken scratch handwriting. She was barely hanging by a thread in math class as it was, and that was the reason she’d stayed behind instead of leaving with Dean, it nothing to do with _Rio—_

“What do you know about this boy?” Mrs. Johnson’s voice cuts through Beth’s thoughts, and Beth turns to meet Mrs. Johnson’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She has the exact same round, kind eyes as Ruby, and they shine, bright and expectant. 

Beth clears her throat. “Which boy?”

“This Stanley Lamont Hill my daughter is so fond of talking about every—single—night at dinner?”

“Mo- _om,_ ” Ruby whines, shielding her face with her hands, like this piece of trivia is embarrassing or at all surprising to Beth. 

Grinning, Beth thinks about Ruby psychoanalyzing Stan’s decision to wear a shirt twice in one week after she’d mentioned she liked it, but she feels a twinge of something else too. Her grin flickers, melting at the corners as she thinks about Ruby and her mother gossiping about boys and sitting down to eat together. 

“Is he a good boy?” Mrs. Johnson asks Beth, ignoring Ruby’s embarrassment. 

“He’s very nice,” Beth confirms, glancing over at Annie, who is huffing onto the glass and then dragging her finger through the condensation, drawing shapes. “He told me Ruby’s clarinet solos could ‘knock someone’s socks right off.’”

“Oh my! That boy must be _blinded_ by love! I have to hear that clarinet every night and let me tell you—!” Mrs. Johnston turns sharply and shoots Beth a gap-toothed smile.

“Mom!”

Mrs. Johnson cackles, delighted, and Beth watches her pat Ruby’s knee with a red-lacquered hand, squeezing gently. Beth looks away, swallowing away a lump in her throat.

“We don’t _know_ that Stan likes me,” Ruby grumbles, staring out the window at the passing buildings as they get closer to the mall. “He just asked me to Homecoming. That doesn’t automatically mean—”

Mrs. Johnson glances back at Beth, one eyebrow raised, shaking her head. “Ruby Berenice Johnson, did I raise a fool?”

“I’m just saying—”

“Did—I—raise—a—fool?”

“Oh my God,” Ruby grumbles.

“Do not take the Lord’s name in vain,” Mrs. Johnson reminds sharply. “But I saw that note. That boy is embarrassing himself, trying to write love poetry. Beth, please tell my daughter she is being absurd.”

“He writes lyrics all the time. It might be nothing—”

“Don’t be oblivious,” Beth jumps in. “He’s _crazy_ over you, Rube. He joined Key Club just because you’re in it.”

Ruby shrugs, shy and uncertain, and Beth rolls her eyes. Despite the fact that Stan had been flirting with Ruby since band camp that summer, Ruby refused to believe that he was into her, choosing instead to interpret all of his compliments and inquiries as his overenthusiastic interest in being her _friend._

“Ooh, he’s in Key Club?” Mrs. Johnson asks, impressed. “He _is_ a good boy. I like him already.”

Ruby repeats the refrain once more: “We’re just friends.”

“Honey, the only type of friend he wanna be is your _boy_ friend.”

“Yeah, and if he isn’t in love with you yet, he will be after he sees you in that dress,” Beth says, thinking of the advertisement that Ruby had ripped out of a _Seventeen Magazine_ to show Beth during English class on Friday: the dress had an emerald green satin bodice with a sweetheart neckline and a flowing black velvet skirt, and Beth could imagine Ruby in it perfectly.

The car slows as Mrs. Johnson pulls into the mall parking lot, following along the road to the back entrance where the movie theater is located. Beth stares at the bright red glowing REGAL CINEMAS sign, and suddenly she’s yanked back to Tuesday, remembering Rio’s leg bouncing incessantly in the the darkness of the movie theater, the way he would burst into laughter at a stupid joke on the big screen. 

Now she was pretty sure he was mad at her, and she couldn’t imagine what he would act like on Monday after he’d watched her go into the house. Beth sighs. How was it that so much could change in just a few days?

The car comes to a stop and Mrs. Johnson says goodbye, promising to pick the girls up in two hours, and Beth looks at her watch, nodding with the comforting knowledge that Mrs. Johnson will keep her word and arrive on the dot. 

They spin on their heels, and Beth grasps Annie’s hand as they walk across the parking lot, reminding her to look both ways when they cross the street.

They pass the bus depot where boys on skateboards do tricks on the pavement. There’s a group of girls sitting on the bench, waiting for the next bus, watching while they lick frozen yogurt off of red plastic spoons. One couple immediately catches Beth’s eyes: a boy dressed in a black Vans t-shirt and black jeans who, in between kickflips, looks over at a girl in a pastel purple dress with butterfly clips in her hair to check if she’s watching. She always is. Her eyes never leave him, and every time they make eye contact, they both grin, him confident and bold, her shy and blushing. Beth almost runs into a trash can, staring at them, only saving herself at the last second.

“Guess I’m not the _only_ one who’s oblivious,” Ruby mutters.

Beth pretends not to hear her, instead opting to remind Annie to keep close. Annie only nods vaguely, neck twisting to stare at one of the girls shoveling a spoonful of frozen yogurt into her mouth.

* * *

Inside, the mall is packed. Giant advertisements line the glass storefronts, showing off puffy satin sleeves and embroidered lace collars on dresses Beth could never hope to afford, while gaggles of girls link arms and float down the hallways into different shops, searching for the perfect dress. 

Ruby leads them straight to the JC Penney's Juniors’ section, and they choose to divide and conquer to try and find the green dress. Beth pretends to close her eyes to play Hide and Seek with Annie, watching as Annie ducks inside the round racks of clothes, keeping an eye on her banged-up sneakers peeking out from the bottoms of the clothes so that Beth can get as much time in as possible to search. Beth sees a few dresses she likes while she looks, but she peeks at just one of the price tags and, immediately flushing red, she tucks the tag back into the dress, hiding it. 

They make quick work of darting around the pairs of mothers and daughters arguing about inappropriate hemlines and the friends discussing the most flattering cuts for various body types.

“Here it is!” Beth calls out to Ruby, finding the dress and flitting through the hangers so that they scrape along the metal rod. “What size?”

Ruby mumbles something, making her way through the aisle to come over to Beth.

“What?” 

“A sixteen,” Ruby says once she’s close enough that she can whisper it. 

Beth frowns, double-checking the last few dresses in the row. “I think they maybe only go up to a 14?”

Ruby’s face falls. “Oh.” 

“It might fit?” Beth suggests uncertainly, holding the hanger out and pressing the dress up to Ruby’s chest. “Different brands run different sizes?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ruby says bleakly, but her eyes flit around the Juniors section. “But maybe I should just look for a different dress.”

“We could grab a couple? Including this one? I mean, there’s lots of nice ones here.” She tries to sound hopeful and excited, but Ruby’s mouth twists. “Just to see?” 

Ruby shrugs halfheartedly, and they separate again, looking for any and all size 16 dresses that might be cute.

“How do you feel about black?” Beth asks Ruby a few minutes later, running a rather plain stretchy black number through her fingers after she pretends to be startled by Annie jumping out from the rack behind her, yelling “Boo!” Beth counts to ten again, peeking through her fingers as she watches Annie dart into another rack. 

“Ehh.” Ruby tilts her head. “It’s kind of boring…”

“Yeah,” Beth agrees. “But the only other thing I’ve found so far is this cheetah print monstrosity.” She holds up a short mini dress that Ruby immediately shakes her head at.

They keep looking and eventually have a small pile of dresses: the plain black dress is a last-minute addition as a concession from Ruby, but they also find a pale yellow halter top, a strapless glittery peach dress, a high-necked white dress, plus a bright red dress with a giant bow at the chest. It’s perfect timing too, because Annie gets tired of hiding—during the last round she pops out of her own accord, tugging on Beth’s sleeve and whining that she was taking too long to find her.

“Wait, do you want to grab some to try on?” Ruby suggests as they leave to head toward the dressing room. 

“No, that’s okay. I’m going to look at Ross, I think,” Beth says quickly, feeling Rio’s $20 bill burning in her pocket as she tries to drag Annie by the hand. The problem is that Annie plants herself in the middle of the aisle, not budging, one hand outstretched towards a display of _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle_ t-shirts.

“Turtles,” she whispers longingly.

Briefly, a thought flickers in Beth’s head that it was a mistake to bring Annie here, to parade her around displays of snacks and toys and clothes that she might want and that Beth couldn’t get for her. That nobody could.

“Up you go,” Beth says, leaning down and hoisting Annie up onto her hip. 

When they get to the change rooms, Beth sets Annie down on a hard plastic bench outside of Ruby’s door. The sounds of jeans unzipping, hangers scraping against metal hooks, and the dull, muffled chatter of friends squeezing into the same dressing room fills Beth’s ears as she starts a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with Annie, hoping it will delay the inevitable boredom meltdown.

Out of the corner of her eye, she registers Ruby’s hands pushing down her dark wash jeans and kicking them off underneath the bottom of the door so that all Beth can see is Ruby’s bare legs in a pair of mismatched socks—one with pink polka dots, the other with black and white zig zags.

“Which one are you trying on first?” Beth asks, playing scissors and sniping her fingers across Annie’s hand. Annie pouts. Beth pinches her nose, making her laugh, coaxing Annie into another round. 

“The green one. I just want to… to get it out of the way.”

The hangers clank against each other as Ruby pulls the green dress of the hook. Beth bites her lip awkwardly. Casting about for a distraction, Beth says, “So… you really tell your mom everything, huh?” 

“Pretty much, I guess,” Ruby says, voice muffled. She must be pulling her sweater off over her head. “God, she’s so embarrassing.”

“No, she’s not,” Beth disagrees, thinking of the last time Ruby had seen her own mother—hungover at the grocery store in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, her robe tied over her pajamas while Ruby’s family was still in their Sunday best, on their way home from church. “I like your mom.”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong—I love her,” Ruby says, grunting. “But she’s ready to start sending out wedding invitations, and I don’t even know if he—”

“He asked you to _Homecoming,_ ” Beth reminds her, counting silently to three with Annie and then playing _Rock_. “It’s exactly how me and Dean got together, except with prom instead. He likes you!”

“How _did_ Dean ask you to Homecoming, by the way? Did he do something cute or did he Dean it up and do nothing instead?” She laughs through the door. 

Beth’s mouth goes dry. “Um, he—” She thinks about seeing Shane Breeler ask his ex-girlfriend in the cafeteria. “He gave me a rose at lunch. It was really sweet.”

Ruby makes a noise of surprise that sounds like, “ _Huh.”_

“I win!” Annie shouts, jolting Beth’s attention back when she wraps her tiny hand over Beth’s fist.

“You win!” Beth celebrates, pretending to be shocked, as if she didn’t know that Annie was going to keep playing _Paper_ until she beat Beth.

Noticing that Ruby’s silent, Beth glances at her dressing room. 

“Ruby?” 

She’s about to ask again when—

“It doesn’t—” Ruby halts, voice wobbly. She clears her throat, and then says more steadily: “It, uh, won’t zip.” 

“I could try—?”

The word comes quickly, thudding to the ground with a heavy finality: “No.”

Beth purses her lips, unsure of what to say.

Brow wrinkled, Annie tilts her head. “What’s wrong?” she asks loudly. 

Beth scrunches her eyes closed. “Annie. Shh.”

“I’m fine,” Ruby insists through the door, and Beth hears the short sound of half a zipper being undone. 

“Try the peach one next,” Beth suggests. It was the next one Ruby seemed to like the most, she thought, and if it fit, it might make her feel better. 

A dejected sigh emits from Ruby’s dressing room. She doesn’t say anything, but Beth sees the shine of the gemstones as the dress drags across the floor just before Ruby pulls it up her bare legs.

 _“Beth,”_ Annie whines, poking Beth in the cheek when she forgets to start a new round of the game. They play twice more, and Annie wins both times. Beth looks at the backs of Ruby’s ankles, and the small sliver of her reflection she could see in the mirror of Ruby’s feet.

“Rubes?” Beth prods gently, looking at Annie and putting a finger up to her lips when Annie tries to talk. She stands, leaning against Ruby’s dressing room door. Glancing around at the other occupied stalls, she whispers, “Do you—um—do you want me to ask the saleslady for more sizes…?” 

“No—it fits—it’s just—” 

“What?”

Ruby sucks in a breath and then says, defeated, “It scrunches up my armpits and—it just—it looks bad, okay? This is what I’m saying. You all think Stan likes me, but why would he? He’s one of the cutest boys in our grade and I’m just the—the _fat_ girl that can’t even play clarinet.”

“Hey,” Beth says softly, scratching a fingernail back and forth against the paint on the wooden door. Annie, not fully understanding but sensing Ruby’s sadness, stands up and wraps herself around Beth’s leg. “You are not fat.”

“Yes I _am,_ ” Ruby insists, and Beth’s heart cracks open when she hears Ruby sniffle. “Don’t lie.”

Beth looks at the ceiling, trying to think of the right thing to say. 

“I saw the way Stan looked at you at the Key Club lunch,” Beth says, remembering Stan striding into his first meeting on Wednesday, showing up the same week Ruby had mentioned it to him. “He, like, totally _lit_ up.” 

That wasn’t even mentioning the goofy smile he’d worn the day Beth had met him when she’d given him his locker combo and told him that Ruby talked about him a lot. 

Ruby doesn’t say anything, but Beth hears the rustle of the taffeta being jostled.

“He likes _you_ , Ruby. Exactly as you are.”

There is a stretch of silence, and Annie looks at Beth with a question in her eyes. 

“Remember how you mentioned your church fundraiser, and then he showed up to yours _and_ stayed to help you for the whole day?”

Ruby scoffs. “He really wanted us to get an LED church sign—”

Beth groans. “Ruby! He’s conned the cafeteria lady into letting him take _two_ chocolate milks for breakfast so he can give one to you every morning in band! He made you a mix tape!”

There’s a beat, and Ruby doesn’t say anything.

“Did you try on another dress?” Beth taps at the door. “Can I see it?”

There’s a sigh and a click as Ruby unlatches the door, pulling it open and stepping back, holding out her arms like, _Well?_

She’s got on the red dress with the bow, which hides a hint of her cleavage. The sleeves are off-the-shoulder and the dress hits right above her knee, hugging her in all the right spots. She looks _great._

“What do you think?” Beth asks excitedly.

Annie answers in place of Ruby: “She looks like a princess!” She beams with crooked teeth.

“She does _,_ ” Beth agrees. “Do _you_ like it?”’

Ruby turns and looks in the mirror. “Well, I really like the bow,” she starts, running her hands down her ribs to her thighs. “And I like that it kinda flows out at the hips? And I like the off-the-shoulder sleeves…” 

Spinning a little, Ruby’s face cracks open, and she grins. 

“I kind of love it,” Ruby says sheepishly.

“You _have_ to get it,” Beth insists. “Stan’s jaw is going to _drop_.”

Ruby’s mouth twitches, and she looks over her shoulder at Beth, her eyes wide and earnest. “You _really_ think he likes me?”

“I’m telling you: he could _not_ keep his eyes off of you in Key Club.”

“I catch him looking at me a lot in band too,” she admits, cheeks darkening with a blush. “And he always smiles at me when he sees me notice.”

“ _See?_ ”

“But you know… speaking of boys staring...”

Beth swallows, nervous, instantly knowing where Ruby’s going. She plays with Annie’s braid, just for something to do with her hands. 

“Rio stares at you... Like. A _lot._ ”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Beth says, tugging at the bottom of her t-shirt, the words spilling out of her mouth too fast.

Ruby levels Beth with an unimpressed look. “Who’s playing oblivious now? I mean, the guy never showed up to school, and then he started tutoring you and—bam!—suddenly he’s everywhere. Gazing at you from across the room like Gatsby with that stupid green light—”

Beth can feel the blood rush into her cheeks, making her too hot. “That’s not true. We’re just—”

“Friends?” Ruby supplies, brows raised. “Mhm.” 

“He has a girlfriend.” Beth is flooded with an image of Rio with a dark green bowtie at his throat, holding Dylan pressed closed against him in a slinky emerald dress. She blinks rapidly, pushing the thought away, sputtering, “And—I have a boyfriend—I have Dean. I like _Dean_. I _love_ Dean.”

Ruby’s eyes widen and her mouth goes slack. “What?”

This wasn’t how Beth wanted to tell her, but now it’s too late. 

Annie tips her neck back and she looks up at Beth curiously, feeling the tension but not recognizing the reason for it.

“I love Dean,” Beth repeats, skin tingling. “And Dean loves me. And I know you don’t like him or whatever, but—”

“I don’t like him, either!” Annie announces, suddenly deciding to jump in. 

Beth sighs, closing her eyes. Annie had declared Dean her enemy since he refused to stop calling her Pipsqueak, amused at how much it riled her up. 

“Look, B, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to say that you, like—”

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Beth says stiffly, wanting desperately to disappear from this conversation. “Come on, Annie.” She looks back at Ruby, who stands in open-mouthed shock. Beth tries to smooth out her emotions, playing calm. She smiles. “Buy your dress. We’ll meet you in Ross, alright?”

* * *

Beth tries to squash the thoughts racing through her mind as she strides across the mall, nearly on autopilot, practically dragging Annie along by the arm, but she can’t get Rio out of her head. She can’t suppress the bubbling anxiety in her gut.

She thinks about him as she walks by the Borders and remembers rounding a corner and startling him so that he hastily shoved a book back on the shelf, pretending he wasn’t skimming through it, except Beth had recognized the flash of blue on the cover, and she knew it was _The Great Gatsby._ She remembers sucking down a Frosty that he bought her and the way he held out that $10 to her, promising that she’d earned half of it, that it was hers, that she should use it to do something stupid and _fun._

But did any of that mean Rio _liked_ her? She tries to smother the thought as soon as it flickers, but it’s useless—it ignites, and her brain immediately goes into overdrive: she sees him smiling at her, teeth gleaming and white; she hears the edge his voice gets when Dean comes up in conversation; she feels the skin underneath her fingers turn hot, remembering holding his chin in her hand staring at a cut on his face that’d he’d said was _a consequence of the job._

She’d never even fully figured out what he meant by that, and had nearly forgotten it in the haze of her fight with Dean. 

Was _she_ doing something? Was she giving Rio the wrong idea somehow, leading him on, encouraging him? 

Was she betraying Dean?

She wants to say no, but…

But she’d made him those cookies. She’d worn the skirt. She’d left her elbow on that armrest in the movie theater, and she’d asked him if they were just friends and, in the split second between her question and his answer, there had been a part of her that couldn’t help hoping—

Briefly, Beth squeezes her eyes shut, pushing back the tears. 

What kind of girlfriend _was_ she?

She didn’t want to hurt Dean. Dean wanted to grow up and marry her and have babies with her and take care of her. Besides Ruby, he’d been the one stable thing in her life since her father left. And he was reliable and honest and sensitive, and she was—

She was a terrible person. 

“Welcome to Ross Dress for Less,” drones a disembodied voice. 

Beth nearly jumps, barely having registered that she’s made it to her destination. She looks to her left, where a bored middle-aged woman sits at the register, chin propped in her hand, a gossip magazine flipped open on the glass display case. She doesn’t even look up.

Refocusing, Beth stops in her tracks to look at the bright blue signs marking the different areas of the store.

“What are you girls looking for?” the Loss Prevention security guard asks them, hands on his belt buckle. He shoots a disgruntled look at the cashier, who doesn’t register it as she licks her thumb and turns the page of her magazine, her mouth in rounded, shocked _O_. 

“You hear about all this stuff with Michael Jackson?” she asks, whistling in shock. “It’s baaaaad.”

The security guard rolls his eyes, then smiles at Beth, waiting for an answer. “Well?”

“Toys!” Annie shrieks at the same time that Beth says, “Juniors dresses?”

“Annie,” Beth hisses.

The security guard chuckles and points to the back left corner of the store. “Dresses are back there.” Annie looks at him, one hand on her hip, unimpressed. He winks at her. “Toys are on the way.”

“You know we can’t get any toys,” Beth tells Annie as soon as they’re out of earshot of the employees.

“But I’m _bored,_ ” Annie whines. “You said it would be fun.”

Beth swallows thickly. She knew that Annie wouldn’t be able to last, but she’d fought for her to come—had believed it was the right choice. But how did she explain to a five-year-old that _safe_ was better than _fun?_

“Let’s grab some books from the kids’ section,” Beth suggests. “You can look at them while I look for my dress. And if you’re _really_ good, we might even finish early and we can go to the playground before Mrs. Johnson picks us up.”

Annie brightens. “Okay!”

Beth picks out a series of knock-off _Ninja Turtles_ books called _Battletoads_ , which Annie regards with skepticism.

“Are you saying you don’t know about _Battletoads_?” Beth acts shocked, trying to sell the idea that Annie is missing out on some cool, fun show to ramp up her excitement. Beth flips the book over, scanning over the summary quickly. “I mean—Rash, Zitz, and Toad, are like, the _original_ Mikey, Don, Raph, and, uh, whats-his-name.” 

Beth has no idea what she’s talking about. Luckily, Annie can’t tell at all.

“You forgot Leo!” Annie yells, choosing to make her way to the dresses by jumping with both feet, trying to land in the middle of the squares of the white tile flooring. “He’s just like you!”

“He _is_?” Beth asks, pretending to be very interested.

“Yeah! He’s boring!”

Beth’s expression flattens. “Thanks for that, Annie.”

Annie cackles, pleased with herself.

When they get to the dress section, Annie immediately plops herself criss-cross on the floor in the middle of the aisle. She flips open the book and, copying Beth, she traces her finger along the words, pretending she can read while she looks at the pictures. Babbling quietly to herself, Beth can just barely hear the story Annie makes up on the fly about the battletoads fighting an evil race of robots so that they can go get a burrito. 

Beth flicks through the disorganized dresses. They’re all out of place, larges in the medium section, smalls in the large, and the tag is the second thing Beth checks as she works her way through the dresses—the first being the price. She doesn’t even allow herself to register the color or the length or the pattern, deciding she won’t tempt herself into falling for a dress she can’t afford.

She’s lost in debating the merits of a pale yellow spandex dress with a rhinestone heart sewn into one of the thick straps when Ruby appears at her shoulder, a JC Penney’s bag hanging off her wrist.

“Hey,” she says timidly, fiddling with the sleeve of her pink sweatshirt. 

“What do you think of this dress?” Beth asks, holding it up to her skin, pretending nothing’s amiss.

She’s relieved when Ruby takes the peace offering without further qualm, dropping the earlier subject entirely. 

“It kind of washes you out, I think?” Ruby says, turning to the rack behind Beth, beginning to sort through a new batch of dresses. 

Beth shrugs, agreeing, rehooking the yellow dress to the rod. “Yeah. I didn’t love the heart, either.”

It was just the first dress she’d found that was both in her size and in her price range that wasn’t an instant veto because of the strapless bra problem—namely that there was no way Beth was wearing one, as she’d recently outgrown hers and had no desire to spend the entire night tugging it up, drawing Dean’s attention to her chest even more than it usually was.

“Well, what are you looking for in a dress? Have you thought about color or anything?”

Beth could lie, but she doesn’t have the energy. She doesn’t want to have to try and sneak a look at price tags before giving an opinion, and she doesn’t want to have to pretend she doesn’t like dresses that she does. Ruby knows her better than that, anyway, and it wasn’t like she didn’t know about Beth’s money issues, either. 

“I only have twenty dollars,” Beth confesses, running her hand up and down a velvet minidress. It feels soft against her skin. “I just want to see what they have in my price range and we’ll go from there, I guess.”

“Got it,” Ruby says, and she does it so smoothly, no trace of pity or judgment anywhere in her voice, that Beth feels a lump in her throat. No matter what else was going on in her life, at least she always had Ruby. 

There’s not a huge selection to choose from, but there’s enough, and Ruby holds up various dresses for Beth to approve or disapprove, tossing the ones she nods at into the basket. Mostly, they find _maybes_ , dresses Beth doesn’t quite like at first glance but which might look alright once she’s in them. They’re about to give up and head to the dressing room when, tucked and hidden behind a truly ugly orange camouflage dress, Ruby finds a shocking contender: a teacup dress with a shiny golden skirt tied at the waist with a perfect bow. The bodice is made of black velvet and a mesh illusion neckline. 

Beth _loves_ it, and instantly, her stomach drops. 

“How much is it?” 

“Hold on.” Ruby digs inside the dress to pull out the tag, and Beth steels herself because there’s no way it’s in her price range. Then, miraculously, like it’s meant to be, Ruby announces, “It’s only $17.99!”

“You’re joking,” Beth says. “What’s that with sales tax?”

“You don’t know how to calculate sales tax?” Ruby asks, judgment in her voice. 

“I’m bad at math!” Beth reminds her. 

“Okay, okay, let’s think,” Ruby says, looking at the ceiling as she works out the calculation in your head. “Ten percent would be $1.70, and tax is a little more than half of ten percent, so…” She squints, one eyebrow arched in concentration. “You’ll have, like, 90 cents left over.”

Beth can’t help it: she squeals.

“It says ‘As is,’ though, so something must be wrong with it?” Ruby holds it out at the end of her arm, head tilted, scrutinizing it. “I don’t see any tears…”

“I bet it’s the zipper,” Beth says excitedly. Reaching for the dress, examines the cheap side zipper, confirming her hunch. “I can fix that in Home Ec!”

They cheer, bouncing on the balls of their feet, and Annie looks up, annoyed at being interrupted from her story. 

“Hey!” she shouts, fussy when Beth makes her get up from—at this point—lying on her belly on the scuffed tile floor in order to follow them to the dressing room.

“This dress was meant to be,” Ruby calls from outside the door, watching Annie on the bench. “I mean, it’s practically fate.”

“I know,” Beth replies, buzzing with excitement as she strips quickly, kicking off her jeans and wrenching her shirt over her head. She takes her time sliding the dress smoothly up her legs, gently tugging the zipper up as far as it will go. When it’s on, she drops her head, sucking in a breath and spinning around until she looks up to study herself in the mirror. 

She’d had a growth spurt over the summer, and coupled with the fact that she didn’t exactly have extra spending money for new clothes that fit properly, Beth often felt gawky, like she was all legs. In the dress, though? She feels beautiful.

“Does it fit?” Ruby’s voice is close, like she’s right up next to the door. “Is it cute? Open up!”

“See for yourself,” Beth says, unlatching the lock. 

Ruby comes into the room and stands beside Beth, looking at her reflection. “B, this dress was _made_ for you. And look, now we’ll both have bows!”

Beth giggles, running her fingers over the broken zipper. It would be an easy fix, really, and the dress didn’t even look that cheap. It was a relief, because she knew that Courtney, Stacy, Natalie, and Misty would all have expensive dresses from Nordstrom’s or Bloomingdale’s, and she really didn’t want to invite comparisons. While it couldn’t pass for being _that_ fancy, it could at least pass for a JC Penney’s dress—maybe even Macy’s. Something respectable.

Beaming, Beth asks, “So, what do you think, Annie? Do you like it?”

She turns around, expecting to see Annie looking at her from the bench, but, besides the abandoned book lying sprawled open on the seat, the bench is empty. 

Beth’s blood runs cold. 

“Annie?” Beth calls out, instantly pitchy and frantic. Her mind swarms with images of someone snatching Annie, dragging her away through the mall, Annie stumbling behind, crying and looking over her shoulder, waiting for Beth to _save her_ —before she was taken somewhere Beth could never find her again.

Beth feels lightheaded, unsteady on her feet. 

“Annie, where are you?” Ruby calls. 

Beth doesn’t hear anything, and, desperately hoping Annie has gone back to playing their game, she ducks, peeking underneath the doors of the other dressing rooms, hoping to see Annie’s little jellies shoes. 

"Hey!" a woman yelps, startled to see Beth's upside down face underneath the door. 

Ignoring her, Beth moves onto the next stall, yelling, “Olly olly oxen free! Come out, come out, wherever you are!” 

Nothing. 

Voice cracking, Beth cries out, “Game’s over, Annie!” 

Swearing, Ruby scrambles out of the dressing room, Beth at her heel with her heart in her throat. They don’t even make it one step out onto the main floor when they see the Loss Prevention security guard headed straight toward them, his black vest flapping.

He’s no longer smiling.

Behind him, a crying Annie is being yanked along by the wrist. In his opposite hand, he holds up a large, ripped-open bag of speciality chocolate like an accusation. 

Beth feels like she’s sinking. 

Annie’s face is covered in brown smudges.

* * *

There’s a dull, repeated _thudding_ echoing in Beth’s ears, but all she sees is the blackness at the back of her eyelids. She’s keeled over on a bench down a long side hallway that leads to the bathrooms and the vending machines, trying not to cry.

Ruby’s hand rubs soothing circles over Beth’s spine, and she’s reminding Beth to breathe, her voice soft but insistent. 

“It’s my fault, B. I’m really sorry.”

Beth opens her mouth to speak, but the air is so thick in her throat that it hurts. 

“Let me pay you back for the candy, that way you can still get the dress—”

Between her knees, Beth shakes her head, sucking in a breath. “No.” 

Even if she took the money from Ruby—which she wouldn’t—there was no way she could go back to that store and face that security guard. It had been mortifying being shunted back into the change room with him outside, foot tapping, waiting for her to come out and pay for the chocolate. It had been worse when, just before she’d left the store, he’d called her back to check her purse—“just to be sure,” he’d said, eyeing her distrustfully. 

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

“Come on. _I_ was supposed to be watching her. You should still get it—I’ll go in for you, I don’t care what they think of me—”

“I don’t care about the dress.” Her voice is hollow.

The thudding gets louder and faster. 

“You don’t?” Ruby pauses, trying to piece it all together. “Then what is it? Because you’re kinda freaking Annie out.”

Beth forces herself to sit up, inhaling sharply as she turns to look at her sister. She’s stationed herself halfway between the bench and the end of the hallway where two bright red vending machines hum. Grunting with exertion, Annie kicks the wall with the rubber toe of her shoe over and over and over again.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

Beth thinks about that day in the park not too long ago, when Annie had tried to squirm away from Beth, determined that she wouldn’t find the Hot Wheel in her pocket. 

“Annie stole.”

“I know—it’s my fault. I should have been watching her.”

Beth scoffs out a small, humorless laugh. “It was definitely not your fault. It was one hundred percent my fault.”

“How? I was the one waiting outside with her.”

“Annie’s my responsibility. _I’m_ supposed to feed her, _I’m_ supposed to watch her.” She pauses. “ _I’m_ supposed to set a good example for her.”

“Set a good example?” Ruby asks, a line forming between her eyebrows. “What are you talking about? You’re a great example.”

Beth sets her jaw, shaking her head. She wishes that were true, but as much as Annie was always complaining that Beth was boring or fighting against Beth’s attempts to make Annie do something, she was _always_ copying Beth. It wasn’t just when she was pretending to read: Annie laughed when Beth laughed. Annie cried when Beth cried. Every morning, she made Beth style her hair however Beth had done hers. 

So why wouldn’t she become a thief like Beth, too?

“Ruby, my mom didn’t give me money to shop for a dress today,” Beth admits bitterly, staring hard at a crack in the wall opposite her. It fractures out from the center like a spiderweb. “She told me to ask the neighbors.”

“Ask the neighbors…?” Ruby repeats, not following. “Why?”

“Because when she asked me how I bought all those groceries, that’s what I told her: that I did odd jobs for the neighbors.” 

“O...kay?” Ruby scrunches her eyebrows. “What, you didn’t want to tell her your nana sent it?”

“That money wasn’t from Nana.”

No, tomorrow Nana would call—like she always did the first Sunday of every month—and Beth would pretend that everything was great, that her Dad had dropped ‘round to say hi, that her mom was really close to finding a job, that the biggest problem in her life was the chem test coming up on Monday—not that she didn’t have enough money to buy a hot lunch. 

“I’m not following this at all. Where did you get the money?”

“I stole it. For the dress—for Dean’s stupid limo—for those groceries.” Ruby’s jaw drops and she blinks once, shocked. Beth lets the words hang between them. “I stole all of it.”

Ruby tries to start a sentence three different times, but no sound comes out. She holds a hand out to steady herself, sucking in a breath, and then says, as neutrally as possible: “You stole it? From where?”

“Rio.”

“Rio?”

A bubble of hysteria erupts out of Beth’s throat. It was hard enough to say it all—hearing Ruby repeat it back was mortifying. “Can you please stop repeating everything I say?”

“Sorry—I just—” Ruby blanks out, like she’s uncertain how to finish her sentence.

There’s a squeak and the bathroom door opens. A tall, stylish woman comes out, shaking droplets of water off her hands. She glances at Annie’s tantrum, then at Beth, who seems to be ignoring it.

“Are you going to stop her?” the woman asks disdainfully, wiping her fingers on her jeans.

Ruby whips her head to look at the woman, her face suddenly hard. “We’ve got it, okay? Mind your own beeswax.”

“She’s scuffing the wall.” When she realizes that Beth and Ruby aren’t going to do anything, the woman leans down over onto her knees to talk to Annie. “Sweetie, you really shouldn’t do that—”

Annie stops kicking instantly, and the woman starts to stand back up, pleased with herself, when Annie yells at the top of her lungs, “STRANGER DANGER!”

The woman jumps, shocked, and scowls at Beth and Ruby. “You really need to get a handle on her.”

“Mind. Your. Own. Beeswax,” Ruby says again firmly, and the woman rolls her eyes, scurrying down the hall and back to the main part of the mall.

“Okay,” Ruby says, turning back to Beth when they’re alone again. “Start at the beginning. Take me through it. The whole thing.” 

Beth exhales a long breath, and then she tells Ruby almost everything she’s been hiding: how she’d broken into Rio’s locker, how she hadn’t originally planned to take the money, but then it had just been so _easy._ How she’d thought to do it again when she couldn’t come up with another way to get the money to pitch in for the limo or buy a dress. How she figured she could get away with it again because Rio had never figured it out the first time—or she was pretty sure, anyway, because he’d never confronted her. 

She even tells Ruby about the library yesterday, how Dean had uninvited her from his game and how he hadn’t called her.

Ruby nods along, listening without speaking, her lips sucked into her mouth. Beth thinks it’s her attempt to appear nonjudgmental, but even though it’s a total failure, once Beth gets started, she just can’t stop talking. She’s not even really talking _to_ Ruby as much as she’s just speaking it all out loud, allowing herself the space to acknowledge for once exactly how much she’s been shoving down. When she’s done, she feels lighter—she’d spent so much of her energy over the last few weeks cutting off thoughts at the root whenever they’d started to sprout.

The relief is short-lived.

“Wait,” Ruby says once Beth has finished. She traces her finger in an arc through the air. “Why did you break into his locker in the _first_ place?”

Beth’s stomach twists. “What?”

“I mean… you made it sound like you didn’t plan it, that it just happened. So... why were you in his locker? What were you looking for?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Beth tucks hair behind her ear, self-conscious. “There was a locker sweep.”

Ruby leans forward, waiting for Beth to say the rest. When she doesn’t, Ruby says, flabbergasted, “Ex _cuse_ me?”

“There was a locker sweep,” Beth repeats, looking away at Annie, who has at this point worn herself out and wandered to the end of the hallway to put herself in timeout in the corner. 

“Are you telling me you broke into his locker to _hide his drugs for him_?” Ruby hisses.

“He couldn’t get caught,” Beth says, jaw twitching. “If he got in trouble, he’d get suspended, or worse—expelled—”

_“So?”_

Beth turns sharply and stares at Ruby, incredulous. 

“He’s a _drug dealer,_ Beth. Have you ever considered that maybe he _should_ be expelled?” Ruby shakes her head. “And you helped him!”

Biting her tongue, Beth thinks about how she can never, ever tell Ruby about what she did at Bandito’s.

“Why would you do that?”

“He cares what his parents think of him,” Beth blurts suddenly, strangely determined to make Ruby reconsider her opinion of Rio. Ruby looks at her like she knows that’s exactly what Beth’s doing. “And, I mean—I need a tutor!”

“Beth, you are _not_ that oblivious.”

Beth rubs a hand across her cheek, trying to rub off the blush erupting across her face. 

“You short-circuit every time he comes up. _And_ you get all defensive over him. Exhibit A,” Ruby says, spreading her five fingers wide and gesturing in a circular motion at Beth. “And it’s not just him staring. I’ve seen the way you look at him too.”

Beth’s quiet, her arms crossed over her chest. She digs her fingernail into her elbow. “What are you trying to say?”

Ruby sighs. “I’m not saying anything… I’m just… asking: are you _sure_ you don’t like Rio?”

Beth stares at Ruby, eyes wide. Ruby looks at her expectantly, _knowingly_ , and Beth can feel it: she can’t pretend she hasn’t considered the question before. 

“I don’t know,” Beth concedes. Ruby narrows her eyes, not letting Beth off the hook. “I really don’t. I just... know I don’t want to.”

And it’s not a lie. She doesn’t. She couldn’t deny that there was something magnetic about Rio, that she often found herself unable to control herself around him, but that was terrifying. Rio was mysterious, hard to pin down, and her life had enough unpredictability. Dean was easy, a familiar constant, and Beth didn’t want to throw that away, even if—even if Rio made her feel good.

Ruby nods, considering. Beth wonders which version of Ruby she’ll get: unwaveringly supportive, or unflinchingly judgmental. She always came through for Beth in the end, but she didn’t always swallow her opinions either. 

“Well… my mom always said you can’t control how you feel,” Ruby says slowly. “You can only control what you do with those feelings.” 

Beth glances at Annie. She’s sitting on the floor again now, back to Beth, head hung, staring at her lap. 

“So… what do you want to do?” Ruby prods. 

Beth picks at her jeans, considering her options. It had become a rare question, what Beth wanted. She’d learned quickly to make do without choices, to accept what was available, if anything was available at all. 

_You get what you get and you don’t get upset._

That was her mother’s catch-phrase—it’s what she used to say when she served peas at dinner, back when she used to cook—and it’s what she said when Beth had cried about her dad not showing up on that first weekend he’d promised he would. 

Beth hadn’t given her the opportunity to say it since. She’d learned to quiet the part of herself that wanted. 

Ruby pokes Beth’s thigh, waiting. 

But Beth doesn’t know what she wants. She only knows what she _doesn’t_ want: she doesn’t want to fight with her boyfriend. She doesn’t want to be a bad girlfriend. She doesn’t want to be like her mom—hiding from all her problems. And she doesn’t want to be like her dad—breaking all of his promises. 

“I want to fix things with Dean.”

“And what about with Rio?” Ruby asks, and Beth notices the way Ruby’s breath hitches while she prepares herself for Beth’s reply. 

“I just want him to be my tutor,” Beth says quietly, but her mind is far away, trying and failing to imagine what it would be like if Rio disappeared from her life completely at this point. “That’s it.”

That’s all that was possible, she thinks, if she wanted to fix things with Dean. 

Ruby lets out a slow, silent exhale. “That seems like a good idea. But if he’s going to be your tutor, he should really teach you how to calculate sales tax.”

Beth forces out a laugh, relieved that the conversation is over. 

“Do you think your mom would drop us at Dean’s on the way back home?”

“Yeah, I bet she would. What about your dress, though?” 

“There’s a Goodwill across the street?” Beth suggests. She glances down at her sunflower watch. “Your mom will be here in a half hour, though.”

Ruby shrugs, like she thinks they can make it. Beth calls Annie back over, who sulks, head hanging the whole walk down the hallway.

“Come here,” Beth says, drawing Annie up into her lap. She swipes her finger across Annie’s baby hairs as Annie lays her head on Beth’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No,” Beth promises, squeezing Annie into a hug. 

“But I did something bad.”

“It’s okay,” Beth reassures her, tilting her cheek down to rest her head against Annie’s. “It’s not your fault.”

* * *

Beth’s stomach churns as she waits on the steps of Dean’s front porch, Mrs. Johnson’s car idling behind her. In her hands, she clutches the Goodwill bag where tucked inside is a mostly plain black dress with an A-line skirt. She kind of hates the marabou trim on the straight-across neckline, but the dress fit and still looked relatively new (and it was in her price range) so she considers it a win. Still, it felt weird to be thinking forward to the dance all day while she felt weighed down by her fight with Dean yesterday. She doesn’t know if Dean has thawed at all, whether he’ll even want to see her. She nearly chickened out of asking Mrs. Johnson to drop her off here, but Dean had never skipped calling her before bed—not since he had asked her to be his girlfriend the night of prom—and she couldn’t handle the dread of waiting to see if he would skip calling again tonight, too. 

There is a shuffling behind the door, and then suddenly it swings open, revealing Dean’s mother in a magenta sweater, fingers toying with a pearl necklace at her throat. 

“Beth, what a surprise! We weren’t expecting you today.” Judith smiles warmly **.** Beth shifts her weight to her other foot. “And you’ve brought Annie! Come in, come in.” 

Judith steps to the side, swinging the door open wider, and Beth turns around, waving goodbye to Ruby and Mrs. Johnson. 

Walking into Dean’s foyer, Beth peeks into the living room and notices that the television is on, the volume low, with one of Judith’s soaps playing on the screen. John must not be home, then. Beth was over most weekends, and he always dominated the living room whenever he was in the house—usually he had a football game on, the announcers booming through the speakers while Judith puttered around in the kitchen. 

Beth had spent a lot of time in there with her, mostly because Dean would usually end up next to his dad on the couch watching the game. Beth would help Judith—with the dishes, with dinner, with dessert, whatever she needed. Judith liked to teach Beth to improve her cooking techniques. So far, she’d taught Beth how to perfect a béarnaise sauce and exactly how to beat the eggs to get a soufflé to rise properly. Judith was attentive and encouraging, always giving Beth little compliments, and Beth soaked up her praise like a sponge. 

“Where’s Mr. Boland?” Beth asks, more out of a sense of politeness than anything else. In reality, she is somewhat relieved he isn’t around—he was a nice enough man, but he had a habit of talking about how pretty Beth was and how lucky Dean was because of it, and Beth had never quite figured out how to respond.

“Ah. He’s been putting in some extra time in at the dealership,” Judith says airily, helping Annie out of her coat and pulling out a hanger from the hall closet. 

“Oh. That must suck, to work on the weekend,” Beth says idly, passing the bag into Judith’s waiting hands so she can tuck it in the closet too. 

Shutting the door, Judith smiles tightly. “Sales die down a bit in the winter so he’s being… proactive.” Suddenly she claps, changing the subject. “I made a cake today. Should we have a slice?“

“Yeah!” Annie cheers.

“Alright, follow me,” Judith says conspiratorially, grabbing Annie’s hand and leading them into the kitchen where they sit at the breakfast bar while she cuts them each a slice of fluffy yellow cake that she’s got displayed on a silver stand on the counter. 

“What do we say?” Beth prods Annie.

“Thank you!”

Judith beams, pouring them each a small glass of milk. 

“Lemon cake is Dean’s _favorite_ ,” Judith reminds Beth when she slides her the cup. “He scored a touchdown last night, so I made this as a special little treat.”

Beth nods, sucking down her milk so that she doesn’t have to say anything more.

“I don’t think I saw you at the game,” Judith mentions offhandedly, running the knife she used to cut the cake under some water in the sink. “Did I just miss you...?”

Beth licks her lips, shaking her head minutely. “No, I... wasn’t able to make it.”

“That’s too bad. I’m sure he wished you were there to see it. I guess that explains why Dean’s been in a mood this morning, though.” She laughs lightly. 

Beth swallows her bite and uses her fork to point at her plate. “This cake is really good—is this buttercream frosting?” 

Judith catches Beth’s pivot, but she just nods, wiping the knife down with a drying towel. “Yes, made from scratch. I should teach you how to make it someday. It’ll come in handy.”

Winking, Judith sets the cake knife on the drying rack, and Beth wonders how much she’s put together about Beth and Dean’s fight. 

Glancing behind her at the door leading back into the living room, Beth contemplates whether it would be okay to escape to Dean’s room at this point. She’s itching to smooth things over with him, to make things right.

“Do you not like your cake?”

Beth startles, prepared to insist that she does, when she realizes that Judith is talking to Annie, who has mashed up the cake on her plate without really eating any of it. 

“Annie,” Beth hisses, nudging her. “Manners.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” Judith says, waving a hand dismissively. “Not your favorite dessert, huh?”

Annie looks to Beth, checking if she’s allowed to be honest. 

Reading Beth’s wide eyes, Annie pushes away the plate with a single finger, shrugging exaggeratedly. “I’m not hungry.”

Judith laughs. “No? You wouldn’t want to… help me bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies while Beth spends time with Dean, then?” 

She winks at Beth while Annie licks her lips, pretending to consider it. “Well…”

“How about you go wash up and I’ll get out of the ingredients? Deal?”

“Deal!” Annie beams. “Do you still have the special soap?”

“I got some more just for you,” Judith says, winking, and Annie slides off the seat, abandoning her plate to run down the hallway to the bathroom with the translucent bar soaps that had a toy inside—usually some sort of small plastic animal. (So far Annie had collected an octopus and a spider, and the whole thing had made her very obsessed with washing her hands—at least when she was at Judith’s). 

“Annie,” Beth sighs, taking the plate to the trash to scrape off the mushed cake. “I’m sorry she wasted a slice.”

“You’re very good with her,” Judith says instead of replying. She pulls a green Pyrex mixing bowl with white daisy embellishments out of a bottom cupboard. “She listens to you.”

“If I’m lucky,” Beth admits, flipping up the tap to rinse off Annie’s plate. “It all depends on her mood.”

“Ha! Believe me, it’s good practice for when you’ve got your own someday.” Judith looks over her shoulder at Beth. “Motherhood is all about managing another person’s emotions. It’s like marriage that way.”

Beth hums noncommittally, unsure of what to say to that. Her parents’ marriage didn’t have a lot of either one of them managing the other’s emotions—her mother was either numb or explosive, her father either repressed or reactive. But that was the problem, wasn’t it?

“Men are a lot more sensitive than they like to admit,” Judith adds, back turned to Beth as she unrubberbands an open package of chocolate chips. “They have to be handled just so—placated, really—in order to keep everything running smoothly.”

Beth swallows, curious as to why Judith is telling her this. Was this another technique she was trying to teach Beth how to perfect?

“So… how do you do it?” Beth asks shyly, pulling open the dishwasher to load hers and Annie’s plates (she fantasizes about this dishwasher whenever she’s standing at her own sink hand washing every dish, rubbing at her aching neck with soapy hands, imagining what it would be like if Judith was her mom—cooking her favorite meals and buying her special soap just because). 

“Well,” Judith says, walking past Beth to get the eggs out of the fridge, “sometimes it will feel like you’re always giving them their way. The trick, I’ve found, is to realize that giving it to them is how you get _your_ way. It’s exactly like lemon cake—take something sour, make it sweet.”

Beth blinks, absorbing this information.

“I think I’ll take Dean a slice,” she says finally.

Judith smiles. “I think that’s a great idea. He’ll like that.”

* * *

Dean’s bedroom door is closed, and Beth raps a knuckle lightly against it twice before she opens the door and steps in, immediately hit with the smell of some type of citrus air freshener that Judith must’ve insisted on to try and mask the the scent of teenage boy—a mix of sweat and used socks and the musk of Dean’s sports bag. Surrounded by small piles of dirty laundry, Dean is flopped onto his black bean bag chair in the middle of the floor playing Mortal Kombat II on his Super Nintendo. He barely glances at Beth, and she isn’t sure whether it’s because he’s still mad or because he’s focused on trying to defeat Shao Khan.

“I brought you some cake,” Beth says timidly, stepping over Dean’s Personal Finance textbook, flipped open on the carpet with some of the pages bent. 

“Thanks,” Dean says, smashing the buttons frantically. The characters on the screen grunt and jab at each other, and Dean makes no other move to acknowledge her.

“Should I set it down or…?”

Dean hums in the affirmative, and Beth scans his room, looking for a cleared space. His nightstand is cluttered with empty Jolt Soda cans, a box of Kleenex, a bottle of lotion, and crumpled tissues; on top of his dresser is a basket of unfolded laundry, already starting to wrinkle; and even the top of the small television set is precariously stacked with game cartridges and VHS tapes. Carefully, Beth sets the small plate on top of one of the soda cans. Then she makes Dean’s bed, tucking the gray plaid blanket in neatly before moving the basket of laundry over onto it. Finally, she moves the cake back to the top of the now-cleared dresser.

“How are you?” Beth tries, grabbing a small white trash can and swiping the used Kleenexes on Dean’s beside table into the bin to reveal a Polaroid photo sitting underneath.

“Fine,” Dean answers, not noticing Beth’s silence as she studies a picture of Dean and Misty, him in swim trunks, her in an orange scoop bikini. His arm is around her, his fingers pressing into her bare ribs. It’s dusk, and they’re on Courtney’s back deck, wet-haired and smiling. 

At the bottom, Misty has written _Don’t we look cute?_ in thick, blue sharpie with a sloppy smiley face. Beth feels a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

“When is this from?” she tries to ask innocently.

Dean glances over his shoulder at her, seeing what she’s talking about, before turning back to his game, facing away from her when he explains shortly, “ _That_ is from the hot tub party at Courtney’s house you didn’t want to go to because ‘you had tutoring.’”

Beth drops the photo back on the nightstand, suddenly eager to change the subject.

“I heard you scored a touchdown last night,” she says, taking a t-shirt off the top of the laundry pile and shaking it out before folding it carefully and starting a stack on his bed.

“Yep.”

“You wanna tell me about it? Give me a play-by-play?”

“It’s a touchdown, Beth. It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

Beth steps back, stung. 

“I wish I’d been there to see it.”

Dean doesn’t respond, just huffs out a frustrated breath as he continues to bash on the buttons of his controller. 

“I’m really sorry I missed it.”

“Are you?” Dean finally presses pause and looks over his shoulder at her, features hard. “Because you didn’t seem to care yesterday.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that too. It’s just—”

She probably should’ve planned what she was going to say a bit better. Dean squints at her, waiting, and when she doesn’t say anything, his mouth twists in disappointment. 

“There was Annie and—and I just really need to get my math grade up,” Beth finishes lamely. She reaches into the basket and pulls out another item to fold, but drops it, suddenly embarrassed, when she realizes it’s a pair of red boxers. 

“Dean?” Beth nudges when he doesn’t say anything, pushing past the boxers to drag out a pair of his jeans. “You know that’s all it was... right?”

Dean sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “I mean, sure, I guess. But it feels like you’re spending a lot of time with that guy now, and I don’t trust him.”

Her heart quickens. “What do you mean?”

Looking back at her with one eyebrow cocked, Dean acts like he can’t believe she’d be so dense. “I _mean_ , he has a reputation.”

“A reputation?” Beth asks blankly. 

“With girls.” Beth stares at Dean, blinking. “And I’ve seen the way he looks at you. It’s like—like he’s _trying_ to get under my skin.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s jealous that I’m with you.”

Beth freezes, the jeans folded in half in her hands. Her heart thumps loudly in her chest. 

“Are you saying that you think Ri—that _he_ likes me? Because he doesn’t,” Beth insists, finding that somehow Rio’s name doesn’t fit into her mouth, not here, not in Dean’s room. Her mind is reeling, scrambling to figure out a way to convince Dean that there’s nothing to worry about—

“I know that,” Dean says, looking at her in confusion, like the suggestion is ludicrous, and it shouldn’t sting, but it _does._ “He obviously just wants to get into your pants.”

The crassness of the words are a sucker punch, and Beth forgets to breathe, staring at Dean in bald shock.

Was that true?

She wants to deny it, wants to protest against it, but a memory swims up to the surface before she can push it down and drown it: how, during their first tutoring session, before he even really _knew_ her, Rio had offered to help her relax. 

_Oh, there’s lots of ways we could do it, darlin’. Some more fun than others._

Beth’s blood runs cold.

Was that really all she was to him—a conquest, a challenge? It hadn’t felt like it, not between the looks and the smiles and that whole day, when they’d gone to lunch together but—

 _No,_ she thinks to herself, cutting off that line of thinking.

Because this wasn’t even something she should care about. God, she was standing in her boyfriend’s bedroom, trying to make things _right_ with him. It didn’t matter if Rio liked her or not—in fact, if _that_ was what Rio wanted from her, well—well, it was _better_ than him really liking her. Now she didn’t have to worry about whether she was leading him on.

And it wasn’t like any of this was a surprise. No, it had been more surprising to think that any of those feelings could be genuine. She’d always known, deep down, that she wasn’t his type. 

“He has a girlfriend.” Beth clears her throat, resuming folding, but when she slaps the jeans on top of the pile before grabbing another t-shirt from the basket, she does so with a bit more force than is necessary.

“Who? Dylan Ortiz?” Dean scoffs. “He’s just using her for sex. It’s just like all the others. I heard he drives girls out to the quarry and then in his backseat, they—”

Dean’s voice mutates into a buzzing, droning sound, and Beth can’t make out the individual words.

_The others? What others?_

And then she’s mad at herself for caring. Why does she? She’d known, hadn’t she? She’d read the note in Rio’s locker, had done the math: no parents plus an invitation _surely_ meant—

But she hadn’t imagined it, before. 

She hadn’t had images flash through her head of Rio kissing another girl, taking off her clothes, taking off _his_ clothes, his hands on her bare skin, her hands on _his_ , doing _that_ —and in his car, the car _she_ sat in almost every day after school, in the backseat where she always threw her bag.

Heat burns through her body—embarrassment blazes across her cheeks and some sort of possessive jealousy ignites in her veins, but that’s not all—an unfamiliar warmth uncurls low in her belly and Beth squeezes her eyes shut, confused. 

“...and he gets _around_ ,” Dean says, finishing his monologue with a low whistle. Beth opens her eyes to see him make a spinning motion with his pointer finger. 

Hands pinching the cotton between her fingers, Beth struggles to make her voice even. “How do you know all this, anyway?”

“Come on, Beth. Stuff like that spreads like wildfire.” 

“But you’re not friends. You’re not even in the same grade.”

Dean shrugs. “Couple guys on my team told me to watch out when I told them he was tutoring you. Santi Muñoz said he had a thing with his sister before she graduated last year. And I know he got with Alice Tamaki, because Charley Booth’s still pissed—they were like _this close_ to dating when your _friend_ swooped in and stole her just to hit-it-and-quit-it.”

 _Last year?_ Beth thinks, fitting the pieces together. But they were just freshmen, then. And Alice and Maria—they were older girls. _Experienced_ girls. Alice, a cheerleader, would’ve been a junior, and Maria Muñoz—she was on prom court, if Beth remembered correctly, gorgeous and tall with cascading caramel hair—she would’ve been a senior. 

If Rio could get with girls like that—what did that say about _his_ experience?

Beth hadn’t really considered it before: Rio’s dating history. (Or—if Dean was right—it wasn’t really a _dating_ history, was it?)

Meanwhile, she was still too embarrassed to even say the word _sex_ out loud. Too prude to let Dean do anything beyond first base. 

“Well, I’m pretty sure he’s with Dylan for real now,” Beth mumbles, unsure of what else to say. _Unless he was a liar too,_ she adds only to herself. She crosses Dean’s room to his closet so that now she stands in front of him as she hangs up a plaid button-up from the laundry basket.

Dean laughs, shaking his head. “You know nothing about guys, Bethie. That doesn’t matter.”

“What? You don’t really think he’d cheat on her?”

“I mean… this _is_ the same guy that cheated me out of a fair price and an invitation to the after-party. Plus, you saw the way Dylan had no idea that party was even happening, let alone that he was _going_. And he didn’t even invite her once she knew. Nobody he knows is gonna be there, so it still doesn’t even make sense that he wants to come—unless he’s, like, trying to use it to get closer to you or something.” 

Her stomach flips because that’s exactly what she’d thought, too. 

“You know you have nothing to worry about, though, right?”

Dean ignores the question, saying instead, “I’m just looking forward to when you get your grade back up so you can stop seeing that guy at all.”

“You want me to stop tutoring?” Beth pauses, taking this in. “But you trust me… right?”

Dean doesn’t answer. He just sets down his controller on the carpet and beckons her to him with a finger, scooting over to make room for her on the bean bag chair. Beth lowers herself down next to him, feeling the beads shift underneath her. 

“Of course I trust you,” Dean says, and then he leans forward to kiss her lightly, pulling away to search her eyes. “It’s just… I miss you. And I guess I miss feeling like your number one.”

Beth looks down at her lap. She’d had no idea that Dean would ask—no, _expect_ —her to stop seeing Rio. And it made sense, she guessed, that he figured she would once her grade was fixed, but Beth had never really thought about it, what came next. All she knows is that, despite everything, imagining it makes something in her constrict. 

How long would it take her to get her grade up? A few weeks? A month? 

_Too soon,_ she thinks, and the realization makes her rub at a knot in her neck. 

She’s so tired of never getting what she wants. Tired of never even asking of it. Tired of not even knowing how. 

And then she hears Judith again: _The trick is to realize that giving them their way is how you get_ your _way._

“You _are_ my number one, Dean,” Beth lies, looking at him and moving her hand up his arm to scratch her nails through the hair at the base of his head, already thinking of the list of things that came before him: Annie, Ruby, her grades. Dean _was_ on the list, but maybe she didn't have to resign herself to never getting what she wanted. Maybe there was a way for them to _both_ get what they wanted. 

(And right now, what she wants is for Dean to stop talking.)

So she kisses him again, firmer this time, her hand on the back of his neck, and she lies back when Dean shifts to crawl on top of her, feeling the beads spread out underneath their weight so that she’s basically just lying on the floor with the small plastic balls digging into her spine. Dean pays special attention to her upper lip, and Beth lets him, not trying to readjust like usual. When he moves his hand from her cheek down to fiddle with the hem of her shirt, she doesn’t stop him—no hand flying to his wrist, no squeak of protest. She just focuses on kissing him, on the smell of the citrus orange air freshener, on the sound of Mortal Kombat II’s pause music in the background, barely registering Dean’s clammy hand move underneath the cotton to slide over her bare stomach and up her ribcage, until she’s no longer the girl that won’t let her boyfriend get to second base anymore. 

* * *

After, once he’s done kissing her, Beth sighs out a relieved breath, pulling his hand out of her bra and then tugging her shirt down so that no bare skin is showing, feeling too exposed. 

Dean smiles at her, glowing, and Beth tries to smile back, but it’s toothless, uncertain.

She feels... weird. Her stomach hurts, like she’s nervous, but hadn’t _she_ wanted this? After months of saying no, she’d finally said yes. It hadn’t been bad, but...

She didn’t know how she was supposed to react as Dean squeezed at her and grinded against her, huffing out noises she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be making too. Mostly she’d just felt like an inexperienced idiot. She wonders if she did it wrong, or worse, if something was wrong with _her_ because she hadn’t felt anything.

Dean interrupts her racing thoughts, running his hand up and down her arm and whispering, “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that. I love you, Bethie.”

Beth nods, realizing for the first time that a line has been crossed and that Dean would not only be unlikely to want to move backwards, but _more_ likely to try and press forwards. She opens her mouth to respond, to say what, she’s not sure, when Dean’s fingers move down her arm to wrap around her naked wrist.

“Where’s your bracelet?”

Beth diverts her eyes, biting her lip.

She hadn’t been able to find it since that day she’d played hooky. She figured it fell off somewhere at the mall—maybe in the movie theater, maybe down by the river where they skipped rocks. Wherever it was, she was pretty sure it was gone forever, which meant there was nothing left to do but tell the truth.

“I lost it,” Beth admits quietly, before trying to explain in a rush. “I don’t know what happened to it, I’ve looked everywhere, and I’m so sorry—”

“Relax, Bethie,” Dean says, reaching over to kiss her again, but her eyes stay wide open and confused. 

“You’re not… mad?”

“I’ll buy you a new bracelet,” he promises, rubbing his thumb over her skin. “A better one.”

And Beth’s not sure how she’s supposed to feel about that either. 

* * *

By the time she’s back home (after having Dean drop them off at a grocery store, pretending she needs to run a few errands before she walks the rest of the way, having to carry a cranky Annie by piggyback the last few blocks), Beth is relieved to find Debbie’s door closed with no light shining in the thin space between the bottom rail and the gray carpet.

She puts Annie straight to bed, and Annie’s so wiped she doesn’t even fight it, yawning sleepily as Beth tugs up her turtle-themed PJ bottoms and unbraids her hair.

It’s not that late, but Beth yawns, too, trekking back into her bedroom, the day weighing heavy on her shoulders. Her mind plays everything on repeat as she unhooks her bra and carefully places it back in her dresser. Peeling her shirt off and shimmying out of her pants to change into a set of faded paisley pajamas, Beth can feel the tension of the arguments, the jealousy, and the dread seeping into her muscles, into her bones. She’s exhausted. 

It’s starting to get colder at night, she realizes, tossing her dirty clothes in the hamper. She snatches her _Gatsby_ book off her desk and quickly crawls into bed under the blanket, feeling the chill at the tip of her nose. She burrows lower under the covers, trying to lose herself in the drama of East Egg and West Egg, wanting to forget almost everything that happened today. It’s only when she has to reread a simple sentence four separate times though, that Beth gives up with a sigh, slapping the book down onto her stomach. She can’t concentrate. 

She cycles pieces of the day on repeat in her head—seeing her her mother’s snide frown, feeling the soft material of dresses she couldn’t afford slipping through her fingers, hearing the thump of Annie trying to attack a wall—but what she coming back to, what she can’t help but _fixate_ on, is the sort of empty, hollow feeling she’d had when Dean’s hand had been up her shirt.

Was that normal? Or was she weird?

Beth stares at the ceiling, aimlessly searching for shapes in the popcorn texture, wishing she had someone she could ask. She’d heard of girls who could go to their mothers about this sort of thing, but she didn’t have a relationship with Debbie like Ruby had with Mrs. Johnson. And Ruby wasn’t an option, either. Not only had she never had a boyfriend, she’d also already made a very firm commitment to God to “stay pure” until marriage—and Beth was pretty sure that included all bases beyond first. Dean’s girlfriends had the expertise, but they also had the habit of making Beth feel naive, simpering at her when they could tell she didn’t understand what they were talking about. She hated it.

She spots a beetle-like blob on the ceiling and can’t help wondering why girls would do it, if it didn’t feel good? She and Courtney and Natalie and Stacy might do it simply because their boyfriends liked it, she supposed, but what about girls like Dylan and Alice and Maria? If Rio wasn’t their boyfriend, there were no expectations. They only had to do what they _wanted_ to do... right?

Didn’t the fact that they did it suggest that she was _supposed_ to enjoy it?

She mulls this question, and the last embers of dusk die away outside her window until she’s blinking into the black darkness of her room.

She wonders if Rio’s reactions to it are anything like Dean’s. If his kisses get harder, too. If he makes the same noises in the back of his throat. If he presses himself against the girls so that they can feel—

Beth swallows thickly, squeezing her legs together, realizing that she’s not imagining Rio with other girls. It’s _her_ in the backseat of his car underneath him. Her shirt is off, rumpled and thrown on the floor of it, and she can feel the hot leather underneath her bare back at the same time that she can feel the blaze of Rio’s hands over her skin—and then that heat she’d felt earlier erupts low in her belly again, oozing like magma. 

Her cheeks burn, embarrassed and overwhelmed at the unfamiliar sensation. She lifts her head up, peeking at her closed door, listening hard for any resulting movement that might suggest someone else is awake, that might warn her that she should _stop._

She hears nothing but the dull rumble of a car passing by on the street, the headlights refracting through her window and bouncing off the ceiling. She thinks she spots a misshapen butterfly in the bumps, and then she’s once again cocooned in silence and darkness. 

Completely alone. 

So maybe she closes her eyes. And maybe she pictures a large brown hand inching up her pale bare stomach. And maybe, at the same time, her own icy hand snakes up her pajama top, causing goosebumps to pearl on her skin. 

Maybe this time it feels good.

(But that doesn’t have to mean anything.)

* * *

**Monday, October 4th**

The rest of the weekend drags. Besides the ten minutes she chats with her grandmother on the phone in the living room, Beth spends most of Sunday afternoon locked away in her bedroom, trying to hover below her mother’s radar. But even though Debbie never comes to check on her, even though Debbie hardly makes any noise at all, her presence looms large, permeating nearly every inch of the apartment. It feels like her resentment is a ghost pressing up against Beth’s door, rattling the handle, slipping beneath the crack to hover over Beth’s shoulder.

Between that and Annie’s incessant begging to go to the park—or to get ice cream, or to play games at the arcade—Beth can hardly concentrate on her homework. She sets Annie up with a coloring book and tries to read for English class _,_ tries to pay attention to every detail, certain there’s going to be a quiz the next day, but all she gets is the gist: Daisy gets more reckless about her affair with Gatsby, and it leads to a confrontation where Gatsby tries to make her choose between him and her husband. Daisy teeters between them, uncertain, but ultimately Tom wins, scaring her by announcing that Gatsby is a bootlegger and then coaxing her toward him, reminding her of all the good times they’ve shared in their marriage. The nuances go over Beth’s head, though. It’s hard to pay attention when Annie starts singing Barney songs, or when she decides she’s bored and starts pretending to be a dog, whining for Beth’s attention. 

The only solution, Beth decides, is setting Annie up in front of the TV—but it’s not long before she hears Debbie open her door and stomp across the carpet. The dull hum of the cartoons suddenly cuts out, Debbie snaps something about the “goddamned volume,” a door slams, and suddenly a teary Annie is crawling into Beth’s lap. Beth rubs her back until Annie’s lulled into a nap, nestled against her like a kitten, thumb in her mouth. 

At least, Beth thinks, it offers her some peace and quiet to finish the rest of the chapter. 

By the time Beth makes dinner (boxed Mac and Cheese, Annie’s favorite) and gets Annie bathed and into a pair of clean pajamas, she’s exhausted. She doesn’t even touch her math homework, figuring there is no point—she and Rio hadn’t even opened their backpacks during Friday’s disastrous tutoring session.

Beth spends the rest of the night fretting, wondering what it will be like to see him again after everything, but she can’t even picture talking to him face-to-face without turning beet red. The way he was always studying her, picking her apart, and seeing what she wanted to hide from everyone else? She was terrified that he would know _exactly_ how she let her imagination run wild on Saturday night. 

And he wasn’t the only one she was worried about scrutinizing her: there was also Ruby.

On the bus ride to school on Monday morning, Beth lies to her. _Again._ Fighting back a yawn, pretending to be nonchalant, Beth tells Ruby—before she can ask—that Dean had regretted his outburst on Friday and that he’d apologized—that there’d been no drama at all. 

“Really? _He_ apologized?” Ruby asks, scratching her head as the bus rumbles down the road, jostling them so that their shoulders bump. “ _Dean_?”

“Yep,” Beth answers easily, braiding her hair over her shoulder (she’d tossed and turned so much last night that she’d overslept and had to scramble just to get Annie dressed and out the door—unable to finish getting properly ready herself).

“He didn’t say anything more about Rio?”

“Nope.”

The weight of Ruby’s scrutiny makes Beth tense—but no follow-up question comes.

After a lengthy pause, Ruby just nods slowly (doubtfully, Beth thinks) and says, “Well… I guess that’s good, then.”

“Yeah, it is,” Beth echoes, finishing off her braid with a hair tie that’s lost most of its elasticity. She twists it around her hair four times, then fidgets with it. “I’m really happy it’s all behind us now.”

It’s not like Beth wants to keep secrets from her best friend, it’s just—she _couldn’t_ tell her the truth. She wasn’t about to shine a spotlight on the extent of Dean’s jealousy over Rio (she didn’t need Ruby questioning Beth’s feelings anymore than she already was), and there was no way she was about to tell Ruby about the rumors Dean had told her about the backseat of Rio’s car (Ruby would be scandalized—and she was holding enough against Rio as it was), and there was absolutely no way she could tell her what had happened on Dean’s bean bag chair (Ruby had used the word “skanky” to describe girls that had done far less—just last week she’d used it when she saw Sheila Bishop making out with her boyfriend in the hallway during passing period—so how could Beth admit she'd let Dean feel her up?). It left her with very little truth left to tell—all she could really say was that things were better now. 

And the thing is, when Beth finds Dean at his locker, it _does_ feel like it’s all in the past. When he sees her, he swoops down to kiss her on the cheek and then he pulls a cinnamon roll out of his backpack, telling her he’d snagged an extra one that his mom had made that morning just for her. He chatters about the dance a little, then launches into the touchdown story he’d refused to tell her on Saturday, and Beth nods along, taking minuscule bites of the cinnamon roll, which tastes too sweet on her tongue.

Her stomach is in knots, and she can’t help but keep glancing over Dean’s shoulder, looking for the moment when Rio rounds the corner with Elena. She doesn’t know exactly what she’s going to do when she sees him—she hasn’t thought that far ahead, just knows she wants to prove to herself that she can get through the moment without her face erupting into flames.

It’s a risky game to play right in front of Dean, but it turns out not to matter. The minutes dwindle down, the knots in her stomach twist tighter, and then the bell rings, harsh and metallic in her ears. 

But Rio never shows up at all.

* * *

“Alright… I see Nathan, I see Casey, Jackie is... _there_ she is,” Ms. Patel murmurs to herself, glancing up as Jackie Green scampers into English a full minute late, breathless. Ms. Patel peers back down her attendance roster, then looks back up, sliding her glasses back up her nose with her pointer finger. She frowns. “No Christopher today, huh?”

Beth can’t help turning to look at Rio’s empty seat. She doesn’t know why she thought he’d appear in English. 

She tries not to put much stock into the fact that he was gone, but a part of her wonders if she—or their fight—has anything to do with it. It’s just—he’d been coming to class more, lately, since they’d started tutoring. And now he'd abruptly disappeared again. 

_But that was crazy,_ she reminds herself. She was being ridiculous. Not everything was about her. 

Beth feels the weight of someone’s gaze on her, and she looks up to see Ms. Patel with her pencil poised over her clipboard, her eyes scanning the crowd for anyone that might have any information on Rio. All around Beth though, the students take advantage of the lull between attendance and class starting, chatting about weekend parties and Homecoming shopping. Nobody seems to have heard Ms. Patel at all. She sits in front of the room, invisible.

“He’s not here today,” Beth offers.

“What a surprise,” Christa calls from across the room sarcastically. When Beth snaps her attention to her, Christa’s smug, lip curling. 

Beth’s cheeks get hot, and she looks down, breaking Christa’s gaze. 

“Thank you, Beth,” Ms. Patel says, jotting something down on her clipboard before she turns to shoot Christa reprimanding glare. 

Christa looks briefly shamed and apologetic, but the second Ms. Patel looks away, Christa rolls her eyes and begins whispering something to Jamie Maynard, who leans in close, apparently enraptured. Beth’s stomach clenches.

Was Christa talking about her? 

How many more people were going to think _something_ was going on between the two of them? Already, the list of people who had their suspicions was getting too long—Dean, Ruby, Christa, and god—even Mr. Stewart had made comments. 

Beth’s pulled from her worries by Ms. Patel setting down her clipboard on the table behind her and officially starting class. 

“Alright, over the weekend you were responsible for reading chapter 7 of Gatsby,” Ms. Patel says, pulling her leg up underneath her on the stool. “We finally got to the climax—”

“Yeah we did!” Bobby Quest mutters, smiling to himself, only it also causes Shane Breeler to break out into giggles.

“Boys,” Ms. Patel scolds. Bobby blushes underneath all of his freckles.

“Sorry, the book just finally got interesting,” Bobby offers, apparently pretending that’s what he’d meant all along.

“Indeed,” Ms. Patel says dryly. “Things finally came to a head—”

Shane snickers, and Ms. Patel briefly closes her eyes as if to summon up the energy to deal with him.

“ _Anyway,_ ” she says, barreling onward, “things come to a boiling point, and Daisy’s finally forced to choose between these two men—her husband, Tom, and her former beau, Gatsby. How many of you were surprised that she chose Tom, the man that’s been cheating on her almost as long as they’ve been married?”

Most of the hands in the class go up, including Ruby's. Beth scrunches lower in her seat. It doesn’t matter: Ms. Patel spots her easily, a lone wolf. 

“Beth? You weren’t surprised?”

She shakes her head.

“Now, in one of our discussions, you were one of the few that could sympathize with Daisy—I think it was just you and—?”

Shaking her head, Beth pretends not to remember. 

“Rio,” Christa supplies, tone bored and unimpressed.

“Right,” Ms. Patel agrees, nodding, “you and Christopher were the only ones that could see that Daisy was just a product of the way she’d been raised. Do you still sympathize with her in this moment?”

Beth shrugs and nods at the same time.

“Really? Can you say more?” Ms. Patel smiles, encouraging, but the eyes of Beth’s classmates feel like pins pricking into her skin. “A lot of people find Daisy shallow and-or weak-willed in this scene. How do you see her?”

“I guess... I think she’s just manipulated, more than anything? Like, Tom and Gatsby both treat her like she’s not even there—they fight _over_ her and just kind of boss her around and talk _about_ her, but nobody ever stops to ask her what she thinks?”

A few girls tilt their heads, considering Beth’s point. 

“And do you think things would be different, if they had? Would Daisy choose differently?” Ms. Patel asks. 

“No,” Beth says, surprising herself. She hadn’t really thought about it—the answer’s just on her tongue before she knows what she’s saying. “Daisy’s been completely dependent on Tom for all these years—Gatsby’s basically asking her to give up her entire life, her entire _history_ in an instant. And Tom knows how to use that against her, too, reminding her of all the nice times they had. I don’t think it’s the right decision to stay with Tom, but I just… I understand why she’d make that decision, and it makes me feel for her. She doesn’t know anything else.”

Ms. Patel nods, opening up the question to everyone else in the class. “Thoughts? Opinions? Reactions?” 

Christa’s hand stretches straight up into the air with a determined poise that makes Beth suck in a breath, preparing for the worst.

Of _course_ Ms. Patel calls on her. 

“I disagree,” Christa says, pillowing her chin in her hand and pursing her lips.

 _What a shock,_ Beth thinks, scowling. 

“Beth acts like Daisy’s some wilting flower—but she’s not. She brings everything on herself. _She_ married Tom when she wasn’t in love with him, _she_ started an affair with Gatsby, and _she_ invited him over to parade him in front of her husband, thinking she was being all secretive when really? She was totally. Completely. Obvious.” Christa punctuates each word with venom, turning slowly to lock her eyes on Beth. “I don’t feel sorry for her at _all_. In fact, I feel sorry for Tom.”

“For _Tom_?” Ms. Patel asks, taken aback. “Why?”

“Because,” Christa says, voice sickly sweet while her eyes go stony and cold, boring into Beth. “His wife is a total tramp.”

* * *

Whatever thrill there had been in watching Ms. Patel write Christa a referral and send her to the principal’s office had been undercut by feeling everyone peering curiously at Beth for the rest of English class, wondering what they were missing. And it hadn’t been helped by Beth catching Jamie Maynard leaning across the aisle with her hand cupped over her mouth to whisper something to Leah Loosli while Ms. Patel marched Christa to the door either. 

All Beth could think about was the possibility of it getting back to Dean, and having to explain why Christa would go after Beth in the first place, let alone like _that_. Ruby had tried to reassure Beth during the passing period between English and Algebra that sophomore gossip would be beneath a senior’s notice, but after Dean’s apparently intricate knowledge of Rio’s dating history, Beth wasn’t so confident. 

Halfway through the period, Christa had appeared fresh from Mr. Ipson’s office with a pink tardy slip, only to sneer at Mr. Stewart’s suggestion that she join Beth and Allison Nowak’s group as they worked on a practice sheet.

“If it’s alright, I’d really rather be partnered with someone who is more at my _level_ , you know what I mean?” Christa had said, voice dripping like poisoned honey. “No offense, of course. I’m just not sure someone who needs a tutor can really keep up with me.” 

Mr. Stewart had made a sharp comment about politeness, and seemed on the verge of humbling Christa by denying her request, but when he noticed Beth’s wide eyes, he’d had a change of heart. Instead, he sent Christa to work with Randy Saboe, a top math student who always smelled like pickles. It would have felt more like a win, except Beth could feel Christa staring daggers at her the entire rest of the period.

The one saving grace had been that Rio hadn’t shown for math class either, so Beth didn’t have to sit in the same room as him and Christa (and Dean) at the same time. But there was tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after _that,_ and Christa didn’t seem to want to ease up on her grudge any time soon. 

The whole thing makes Beth feel like she was fraying at the seams, and the feeling persists even after she escapes the confines at school to eat lunch at Dickie’s with Dean and his friends.

Luckily, the inside of the diner is packed, and the place is drowning in noise—knives sliding across plates, forks clattering inside plastic bins as customers bus their own tables, cashiers hollering orders to the kitchen—and, scrunched into a plush green corner booth sitting between Dean and his smushed-face friend Jeremy, Beth’s free to disappear for a minute. To sink into the background and just _observe._

All of Dean’s friends—besides Stacy and Kyle, who had taken the lunch period to drive to Kyle’s to take advantage of the empty house—are spread around the booth. On the other side of Dean is Misty, her blonde hair crimped and set in a high ponytail, reapplying a bright pink lip gloss with a small cheetah-print compact. Next to her is Natalie, her long copper hair plaited into a set of braids, idly playing with a floppy french fry while her boyfriend, Eric, complains about the general concept of homework.

“I mean, don’t they know that we have practice until, like, six o’clock _every_ day? When am I supposed to have me-time, y’know?” he asks, plucking the fry from Natalie’s hands to pop it into his mouth. “It’s totally unfair.”

“Football _is_ me-time,” says Courtney, Jeremy’s much-too-pretty-for-him girlfriend, rolling her eyes. She flicks a tater tot at Eric from across the table, and he snatches up with a quick reflex before he tosses it in the air, catching it with his mouth. “Nobody’s forcing you to play.”

“Football is not me-time,” Dean argues, shaking his head. “ _Believe_ me, me-time doesn't include fifty sweaty dudes rolling around in the mud together.”

“Dean would know, he has the most me-time of any of us,” Eric says, laughing open-mouthed so that Beth can see the white mush of some chewed-up fries on his tongue. 

_Gross,_ she thinks, shuddering. 

“Not so fast,” Jeremy says, wiggling his eyebrows. “Didn’t you hear? Our Baby Boy Boland was just promoted from the minors to join us men in the majors.”

Beth turns, looking at Jeremy blankly. 

Courtney and Natalie glance at each other across the table, expressions both surprised and impressed, but Misty snaps her compact shut before throwing it into her jean purse with a huff.

“For real?” Eric asks. “Nice sack, man!” 

Eric holds out his fist to Dean, but when Beth twists to look up at Dean with a question in her eyes, he shakes his head sharply, his cheeks reddening. 

“Huh?” Eric asks, not understanding, but Natalie tugs on his arm, forcing it down from waiting for a fist bump which apparently wasn’t coming. “I don’t get—”

“So, uh, did I tell you guys about that drug dealer charging us more for the party favors this weekend?” Dean asks quickly, scratching his ear.

“You told me,” Jeremy says. 

“And he told me,” Courtney adds.

“Court told us,” Natalie says, pointing back and forth between herself and Misty. “And I told Eric.”

“Well, I’m still mad about it,” Dean says, and Beth stares at him as he launches into a monologue about the injustice of Rio’s pricing inconsistencies, but the longer he talks, the further away he sounds, his voice garbled and incomprehensible.

Did Dean _tell_ Jeremy what had happened between them this weekend, Beth wonders? She’d known that Dean said that “these things get around,” but she hadn’t realized that he meant _he’d_ be the one spreading them. 

She shifts, extricating herself from Dean’s arm hooked over her shoulder. Riled up about Rio now, Dean hardly notices, using his free arm to reach for his strawberry milkshake.

Did everyone at the table know now, what her and Dean had done? Beth feels a spike of anger in her gut. Did they know something about her that even _Ruby_ didn’t? That _she_ still wasn’t even sure she wanted to do again? 

“The dude’s got, like, a monopoly on campus,” Dean complains, dunking a spoon into the cup and taking a big bite of ice cream. 

“Ooh, look at you all fancy, using our Econ vocab,” Misty teases, booping Dean on the nose.

Beth licks her teeth while Dean laughs, batting Misty’s hand away so that he accidentally flicks a piece of ice cream into Beth’s eye. She scowls, wiping it off while Dean points at Misty with his spoon.

“I’m just saying, if you want anything more than, like, a dime bag or a six-pack—he’s the only guy there is to go to. It sucks. We need someone else to start selling.”

“Totally. We should find someone to, like, oust him,” Jeremy agrees, using a slicing motion against his neck.

“Like a coup,” Courtney says, a glimmer in her eye. 

Beth feels a pang in her stomach. “What do you mean?”

“I _mean,_ ” Dean emphasizes, whispering conspiratorially, “that we find someone else that can buy large quantities of stuff so that nobody has to go to that guy and be ripped off by him anymore. Run him out of business. It’s what my dad does to any new car dealership that opens up on Ford Road—he just, like, drops his prices, runs a lot of sales, and steals all their customers til they end up folding. Poof. Gone. No more competition.”

“That’s terrible,” Beth protests. 

“You just don’t have a head for business,” Dean says, poking her temple with the end of his spoon. He scoops out another bite and tries to feed it to Beth, who leans back and away from him, shaking her head. “We gotta think big, find someone who has easy access to booze.”

“My cousin dropped out of UMich,” Misty says slowly. “She just moved back home and is basically going to be bumming around until next summer when she goes backpacking through Europe. I bet she’d do it.”

“Really?” Natalie asks. “You should ask her. Maybe she could hook us up before this weekend, and then we could cancel our order with Rio. Uninvite him.”

“We can’t,” Beth says quickly.

Everyone whips around to look at her.

“And why not?” Courtney asks, one perfectly sculpted brow raised in question.

“I just mean…” Beth casts about for an explanation. “He’s already got a pretty substantial down payment from you guys. He’s not going to give us a refund. He basically said as much when Dean tried to uninvite him from the party. Unless you want to lose all that money…”

Dean sighs. “Yeah, you’re right. We’re stuck this time. But _next_ time…”

 _She’ll have to warn him,_ she thinks, before next time comes around. 

* * *

**Thursday, October 7th**

The next few days pass by torturously slowly. It feels like each minute crawls to the finish line, and the sound of the second hand clicking by on the clock is the loudest noise in any room.

Besides Christa taking every possible opportunity to give Beth a hard time (whispering to seatmates whenever Beth makes a comment in class, dropping a stack of papers that she passes back to Beth before she has a firm grip on it so that the papers spill all over the floor, making a snide comment about butterfly clips on a day Beth was wearing a butterfly clip—the list went on) the week is also stressful because Rio doesn’t show up to school at all. At least, he’s not in math or English, and he definitely doesn’t go to tutoring.

On Monday, too embarrassed by the idea of getting stood up again, Beth comes up with a plan to leave a note with the librarian in case Rio appears. The note is simple and straightforward—she doesn’t provide a reason, just says she has to cancel, and if he wants to confirm tutoring for Tuesday, he should drop a note in her locker. Ms. Colte agrees to give it to him, her eyes sparkling. 

Beth checks her locker between every period on Tuesday, but it remains empty. Still, unable to help herself, she uses her TA period to wander around the library. It’s only when she’s caught perusing a dusty shelf of reference books that nobody has touched in at least five years that Ms. Colte says, “He didn’t come by yesterday. Would you like to leave another note?”

Beth shakes her head quickly, but Ms. Colte has already pulled out a sheet of notebook paper and a pencil from her desk, so, not wanting to be impolite, Beth hastily scrawls a new message—only this time, she tells him she’s not going to wait around for him if he wasn’t going to show up, and _he_ (underlined three times for emphasis) should figure out a way to contact _her_ if he wants to resume their tutoring schedule.

She regrets it by the end of the day and slinks back into the library with a new, nicer note, and Ms. Colte just nods knowingly, tossing the old one in the trash without question. 

On Wednesday, Beth thinks she spots his buzz cut ahead of her in the hallway, but whoever it is walks too quickly and she can’t catch up to confirm.

The longer it goes on, the more Beth has the sinking feeling that she was right, that he’s avoiding her after their fight. She swings between feeling indignant and feeling like she’s missed a step walking down the stairs. Was it over, their whole friendship, just like that? Was he never going to talk to her again? 

By the time Thursday comes around, Beth feels like she’s unraveling, especially when Mr. Stewart announces a quiz in math class. Rio _always_ comes for quizzes, and he’s not here—but she’d been half certain she’d glimpsed him disappearing into physics that morning with Elena. She wants to fix things, but she can’t even _find_ him, let alone figure out what on earth she would _say_.

She’s rehearsing various scenarios in her head, leg bouncing, when Mr. Stewart says, “Time’s up. Please pass your quizzes to the front.”

Jerking her head up, Beth looks at the clock just above Christa’s blonde space buns hairstyle, realizing she’d completely lost track of time. She scans the paper in front of her. It’s half-blank.

 _No,_ she thinks desperately. 

Christa sighs exasperatedly and Beth looks up to see her waiting, hand out, fingers flexing impatiently. 

“Do you know how to follow a simple instruction or what? God.”

Beth huffs, rolling her eyes, and she twists to grab the quiz that Allison Nowak’s holding out for her. Beth passes both to Christa, making sure to put Allison’s on top.

It doesn’t matter. Christa snatches the papers out of Beth’s hand and immediately slides Allison’s paper to the back, skimming over Beth’s answers. 

“Wow.” She purses her lips. “I guess you _don’t_ know how to follow directions. You do know to earn points, you actually have to put down answers, right?"

Sighing, Beth rolls her eyes.

"Are you really that dumb, or do you just pretend because you think it gets you attention?”

Cheeks burning, Beth digs her nails into her thigh. “Leave me alone, Christa.”

“You _do_ know you’re supposed to actually study during tutoring, right? Not just try and steal people’s boyfriends?”

“Have you ever considered that I’m not trying and that maybe he just doesn’t like your friend that much?” Beth snaps, surprising herself. “And for the record,” Beth adds, sitting up taller in her chair, “I think ‘boyfriend’ is a strong word to describe a backseat hookup at the quarry.”

Christa’s jaw drops. On either side of her, Beth feels her seat neighbor’s slide their eyes over to look at her, but they otherwise freeze, pretending not to listen. 

“ _What_ did you say?”

Beth crosses her arms. “You heard me.”

Eyes squinting into a glare, Christa huffs and flounces back to stare at the front of the room, her neck a bright, blotchy red. 

And for the rest of class, while Mr. Stewart drones on about graphing polynomials, Beth daydreams about what it would be like to reach over and just cut one of Christa’s stupid space buns right off. By the time the bell rings, she’s fuming, and she shoves her book into her backpack, ready to get as far away from Christa as possible, but the second she stands up—

“Ms. Marks, a word, please?”

Beth spins on the spot, hands clutched around the straps of her backpack, to find Mr. Stewart leaning against the side of his desk.

A few kids glance over their shoulder as they leave the room, curious about her detainment, and Beth’s anger melts into anxiety. 

Had Mr. Stewart heard what she’d said to Christa?

“How was your quiz today?” Mr. Stewart asks, scratching at a sticker of a unicorn some kid must’ve pressed to the personalized name plate he has at the edge of his desk.

“Fine,” Beth says quickly. 

“Really?” He pauses on the sticker and looks up at her. “Tutoring’s still going well, then?”

“Yep.” Beth nods, shifting her weight from her left foot to her right. 

“Mr. Hidalgo’s been absent. He’s still showing up to tutoring, though?” 

“Well, he’s missed the last few days,” Beth admits awkwardly. 

“You know the deal only applies so long as the tutoring is regular and consistent? As long as _you’re_ benefiting from it?”

She can hear Mr. Stewart’s nail slide back and forth against the grain of the nameplate as he works at the sticker. 

“What deal?” 

“The deal I made with Mr. Hidalgo, where he gets out of homework and detention in _exchange_ for helping a fellow math student.”

“Oh.” Beth drops her gaze to stare at the scuff marks on her platform Skechers, pulling up the memory of Stewart explaining that detentions turn into suspensions which turn into expulsions. Even if Rio never wanted to talk to her again, though, she’d never do that to him. “Well, he’s been very helpful. I, uh, think he’s just been sick or something the past few days.”

“Ah. So you’ll be back on track soon?” Mr. Stewart prods, leaning down to peer at her.

Beth straightens up and nods firmly. “Yes.”

“Alright, well, as long as Ms. Colte can confirm that, we’ll be good to go.”

“Ms. Colte?” 

“Yes, the librarian? She’s... a good friend. She keeps me up to date on all the little arrangements I have with various students that study in the library.” 

Mr. Stewart peels off the last bit of the sticker, then rolls it between his fingers, grinning. Beth gulps.

“She can confirm what you’ve said is correct, right, Ms. Marks?”

“Of course,” Beth says weakly. “As soon as he’s better, we’ll be back to it.”

“Good.” He flicks the sticker into a garbage can just behind him. “Have a nice day, then.”

“Mr. Stewart?” Beth asks before she can lose her nerve.

He looks up at her, eyebrows raised.

“I was wondering—could I change seats? I’m sort of… having trouble focusing, where I am now.”

“Everything alright?” Mr. Stewart asks, wiping his hands and standing to stick them in his pockets. “Anything Ipson should know about?”

Beth shudders to think how Christa’s behavior might escalate if Beth got her into any more trouble. She felt like she was thin ice already—at least so far Christa hadn’t said anything to Dean.

“No, just… a different seat would be great.”

“I can do that,” Mr. Stewart promises, a twinkle in his eye. 

And that, at least, feels like one brick’s been lifted off the rockpile Beth feels like she’s been dragging behind her all week. 

Now she just has to deal with the tutoring problem. 

* * *

Rio’s car is in the parking lot when Dean drives her back from Dickie’s, the brown paint gleaming in the October afternoon sun. Beth’s stomach jumps at seeing it, and she confirms that he’s really at school when, during her Office TA period, she volunteers to jump up to grab the attendance roster that Isaiah Acevas delivers from Rio’s gym class. Her eyes skirt over _Hidalgo, Christopher_ marked “present” before she sets it on Marianne’s pile.

Beth feels a storm cloud percolating above her head, and when June signs a pink slip requesting immediate attendance in the counseling office for Carrie Joseph, Beth takes her time going through the master schedule binder, flicking through the pages not only to find that Carrie’s sixth period takes place in D8 with Madame Heller, but that Rio’s seventh period takes place in B3 with Mr. Neal. 

There’s no way she can get to him in the gym now—he’s probably in the middle of a basketball game or a relay race or something—but maybe she could snag him before he disappeared into history? 

_Or, even better,_ she thinks, snatching an extra pink slip off the pile when June disappears into the staff lounge to make another cup of coffee—she’ll trace June’s signature onto a slip and deliver it to Mr. Neal herself. He’ll have no idea that she’s not the Office TA seventh period, and then, if Rio tried to rush off into class, avoiding her, she’ll have a trump card.

It would mean she’d be late to Home Ec, she considers, sneakers squeaking down the hall as she walks Carrie’s slip to D Hall, but she’ll just tell Mrs. Brink that she’d unexpectedly started her period or something. She’d buy that, easy.

The only flaw in the entire plan is that when Beth waits outside Mr. Neal’s classroom, Rio never shows up. It’s almost like he _knew_ she’d be waiting for him. After five minutes passes, she peeks in the class through the small glass window, wondering if she’d just missed that he was already in there when she’d arrived—but no, she doesn’t see him. She _does_ , however, see Dylan Ortiz catch her eye, and Beth ducks quickly, scurrying off and back to class, her heart pounding.

She’s just about to round the corner into Mrs. Brink’s classroom, her practiced lie on the tip of her tongue, when instead she collides into someone coming _out_ of the classroom. They knock heads together, and Beth groans, rubbing at her skull.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, trying to shake it off, only she looks up at the person she’s crashed into none other than Elena Trujillo. “Oh. Hi,” she adds awkwardly. 

“Hi,” Elena says, one eye squinting in pain as she holds her fingers to her forehead. 

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Elena reassures. She lifts her other hand to gesture at Beth, the bathroom pass hanging off her wrist. “Are you?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Beth promises.

Elena smiles politely and makes to sidestep around Beth when Beth blurts out, “Do you know how I can get a hold of Rio? It’s, um, important. Mr. Stewart said—I mean—he tutors me, Rio does, and—”

Elena stops in her tracks, her smile widening. “So I’ve heard.”

Beth grimaces, massaging the sore spot at her hairline. She wonders if she’ll bruise—if she’ll just be sporting a giant purpose mark on her forehead for the dance.

“Do you want his phone number, or—?”

“Oh,” Beth says, taken aback. She pictures herself lying in her bed, calling Rio on the phone. It’s weird, imagining talking to him while she’s wearing pajamas, hearing his raspy voice in the darkness of her room. “No. No thanks. Uh.”

She feels Elena studying her and her face gets hot.

“Maybe I could give you a note, or—? I thought I saw him at school today, but it looks like he’s absent again?”

“Oh, no, he’s here. He’s just avoiding history class,” Elena says, then quickly presses her fingers to her lips as if she’s said too much. “Anyway. Um. He’s out at the dugouts.”

“The dugouts?” Beth asks, eye twitching, not sure she’s understanding. “He plays baseball?”

Elena laughs. “No. It’s a place him and Mar sneak off to—well, do things they really aren’t supposed to do.”

“Idiots,” Beth murmurs, running her fingers over her head once more. The pain seems to be subsiding now, at least. 

“Right?!” Elena smiles again, and it cracks her face open wide, like a tulip blooming in spring. Beth can’t help it: she smiles, too. 

“I’m going to go find him, I think,” Beth says after a beat, glancing over her shoulder to make sure they’re alone in the hallway. “So if you could, um, not mention to Mrs. Brink that you saw me in the hall…?”

“My lips are sealed,” Elena promises, miming running a zipper across her mouth. Then, after squealing a high-pitched, “Good luck!” that Beth doesn’t know what to make of, Elena practically skips off to the girls’ restroom.

Beth hurries along to the double doors that lead out to the dugouts and the football field, heart pounding. She doesn’t even think about what to say, she just beelines, brain focused only on processing how to put one foot in front of the other, over and over and over again, until suddenly she’s crunching over gravel and then kicking up the dust of the baseball field. 

It’s not until she turns the corner and sees him—for the first time in nearly a week—that she processes what she’s doing. He’s there, sitting on the bench, languidly leaning over with his elbows on his knees, a joint in his hand and a black hoodie barely perched on his head, his face scruffier than usual. She stops abruptly in front of him, heart lurching into her throat. 

He looks up at her, and there’s a moment where he wears naked surprise on his face. Beth’s breath stutters, and then it’s gone, his expression replaced with something blank, almost bored.

Suddenly she feels the cold October wind nip at her skin, and goosebumps erupt all over her body.

Rio raises a brow.

“You skipped tutoring,” Beth announces without preamble, “for three days in a row.”

Next to Rio, there’s movement, and Beth’s eyes flit over to recognize Mar readjusting, straightening up.

“Hello,” Beth says quickly, embarrassed to have missed him before.

“‘Sup,” Mar replies, amusement flickering across his face. 

Rio doesn’t react at all, just sucks on his joint and then exhales three perfect circles of smoke in a row before he rubs his fingers across his mouth. 

“Miss me?” 

Beth ignores that. 

“That stinks, you know,” Beth says, nodding toward the joint. “And if you get caught, you’ll get suspended.”

Mar scratches his chin, brows furrowed. 

“That right?” Rio asks, tapping the joint against the bench and stamping out the burning orange embers at the end. “You gonna tell on me, princess?”

Beth glares at him, jaw jutting out, hating the dumb smirk he has on his lips and the way his eyes shine like midnight. 

“I’m here to warn you,” Beth spits. “Stewart told me that if you don’t start showing up to tutoring again, the deal’s off the table and it’ll be back to detentions and suspensions and eventually _expulsion_ , which I was under the impression you were trying to _avoid._ ”

Rio runs his tongue along his bottom lip. “So you’re lookin’ out for me? That it?”

“Do whatever you want. I don’t care. I’m just telling you what Stewart said.”

Beth flicks her hair back, and Rio takes his lower lip into his mouth, nodding.

“That why you skipped class to come find me? ‘Cause you don’t care?” 

Rio leans back to slide the joint back into his pants pocket, and when Beth doesn’t respond, he looks up at her through his lashes. It reminds her so much of the way she’d imagined he might look up at her after his lips had been at her neck that she feels a blush blaze across her face, betraying her. She watches Rio clock it, and then she fidgets, scratching at her arm. 

“Well, if that’s what Stewart said, then I guess I gotta do it, huh?” Rio says slowly, his hands disappearing into his hoodie pockets.

“Sounds like it,” Mar agrees, and Beth glances at him, remembering once again that he exists. He grins at her like he knows that’s the case and like he seems to find it funny. Beth frowns. 

Rio stands, towering over her. She tilts her head to look up at him, and if she didn’t know his face so well, she might miss the slightest curve of his lip on one side. A smile.

“See you after school, yeah?”

Beth clears her throat. “Mhm, yeah.”

Rio taps her arm, squeezing just underneath her sleeve cap, and then he’s gone, Mar trailing behind. 

When she’s alone, Beth exhales, eyes falling to the spot where his warm fingers had just touched her skin.

It’s the first time, she realizes, that he’s ever touched her on purpose. 

* * *

When Beth opens the heavy double doors and enters the library after school, Ms. Colte looks up from a stack of books she’s scanning and smiles, tilting her head towards a round table where Rio sits facing away from her, tapping a pencil against his bouncing knee.

Beth drops down in the seat next to him; Rio stills. She pulls her textbook out of her bag and flips through the pages, looking for the chapter on graphing polynomials. When she finds it, she slides the book over to Rio, silent.

For a moment, Rio just looks at her. Then, recognizing, maybe, that she won’t break first and speak, he curls his lip out and nods like he’s not surprised. He pulls the book into the correct position, then begins reading the instructions on how the formula works.

He’s the type of person that soundlessly mouths along the words as he reads. Beth watches him intently, the way his brow sometimes knits in concentration, the way he absentmindedly taps a single finger on the table next to the book so lightly that Beth can barely hear it, even this close to him. 

He still doesn’t say anything as he pulls out his binder and snags a piece of notebook paper so that he can start working out how to do the problems step-by-step. He’s copying down an equation, glancing back and forth between the book and the paper, his mouth slightly open so that she can see the tip of his tongue pushing against his front teeth, when Beth notices the silver sharpie all over his binder. 

She tugs it over to her, studying his art. On one side, he’s filled the space with MC Escher-style optical illusions: stairs that lead nowhere, boxes that aren’t physically possible—but also geographic patterns, repeated meticulously over and over again, covering every square inch. On the other side, there are monsters. She spots Medusa, snake-hair curled around her neck; a cyclops smoking a joint; a siren, perched on a rock, gazing at herself in a handheld mirror. Then there’s a profile of a woman with a battle helmet on her head that Beth can’t place at first, but no—it must be the goddess of warfare, she realizes. Minerva, the one he’d named his car after.

Mostly, though, there are birds. On Minerva’s shoulder, for one, but also in trees or flying through the sky, their talons poised for attack. They cover all the spaces in between his mythology doodles. 

She feels more than sees Rio stiffen beside her as she traces her finger over the thick lines of his simple style. It’s weird how she’s never seen his drawings before and yet they all feel familiar, like they look exactly like she would’ve imagined they did. 

“You’re really good,” Beth says quietly, pushing the binder back into his space.

“Thanks,” Rio says, running his hand over his hair. 

The doors slam open and they both jerk their heads up to see Bobby Quest and Shane Breeler leaving the library, backpacks slung over their shoulders.

Beth hadn’t even realized they’d been in here.

“Was half-expectin’ that to be your boyfriend comin’ in to check up on you,” Rio murmurs. 

Beth shrugs, crossing her legs. “I think he thinks I rode the bus home again today… since I haven’t gone to tutoring all week.”

Rio rocks his jaw, but he doesn’t say anything. Beth doesn’t know what to make of it.

“He really doesn’t like you,” she says quietly.

“That right?” Rio asks, rolling his shoulders. “Why’s that?”

“He’s still mad.” She pauses. “About the price change.”

“Ah.” Rio drops his head again to keep working on the math problem.

“Do you think you could… drop it? Honor the original deal?” 

“Nah,” Rio says, shaking his head sharply. “Don’t work like that.”

“Why? You offered him the deal in the first place—”

“And then I changed my mind.”

“Rio—” 

He snaps his head up to look at her, his eyebrows lifted in impatience, like he doesn’t want to listen to her argue on behalf of Dean but—that’s not it. It’s not it at all.

She’d robbed him—not once, but twice—and she can still see, half-hidden by the beard he’s growing, the blackened scab on his chin. She doesn’t know, exactly, how he got it, but she knows she’s wrapped up in it, and knows that if she doesn’t tell him, she’s choosing to leave him unprotected.

If Dean’s plan is successful, Rio could get hurt. Again. And it would be her fault. 

She _owes_ him. 

“He wants to _oust_ you.”

Rio looks up again and blinks slowly. “What?”

“He wants to organize a coup.”

Rio squints at her. “Those are some big words for him. Can he spell ‘em?”

She frowns at him. He wasn’t taking her seriously.

“Him and his friends—they’re going to try and get their—” she glances over at Ms. Colte typing at her computer, looking over her glasses at the tip of her nose, “— _stuff_ from someone else. They want to run you out of business.”

Rio cocks his head, resting his cheek against his hand. “Why are you tellin’ me this?”

His eyes are impossibly bright, flicking up and down her face curiously. 

“Because,” she insists, brimming with frustration. Why did he want her to _justify_ that she wanted to _help_ him? “We’re _friends._ ”

“Right, right.” Rio smiles, his tongue darting out to run across his bottom lip. He leans closer to her, drops his voice. “But _he’s_ your boyfriend.”

Beth understands his insinuation that she’s choosing him again, choosing him over Dean, and she bristles. Her eyes scan his face: his hooded, electric eyes. His lips, nearly a pout. That scab. 

“How’s it healing?” She reaches out, presses a knuckle under his jaw, tilting up his head to examine it. 

Rio’s eyes darken and she feels his jaw shift. 

“What was it you said?” Rio lets his mouth fall open, almost like he might answer her, but he doesn’t say anything. “‘Consequences of the job?’ What if—?”

Rio jerks back out of her grip, his hand coming up to swallow hers and press it down to the table. “Look, I ain’t worried about your rich boyfriend and his dumbass friends. I know they think they the center of the universe, but they ain’t nothin’ to me. I don’t need them.”

Beth’s eyes drop to Rio’s hand still on top of hers, the pads of his fingers calloused against the smooth skin of the back of her hand, and she freezes, like every muscle in her body just _clenches_. 

“Okay,” she says thickly, because if there are other words in the English language, she thinks she’s forgotten them.

Rio follows her eyeline and then snatches his hand back, grabbing the pencil again. “Okay.”

And for the next half hour, the only thing they talk about is math.

* * *

Beth moves to hoist her backpack up and over the seat and into the back of Rio’s car when she stops suddenly, remembering. She tosses her backpack between her feet instead, and then, when Rio opens his door and ducks to slide into the car, she tears her eyes away from the tan leather of the backseat, taking him in.

He’s tall, she thinks, watching as he slots the car key into the ignition, his large fingers turning it so that the car rumbles to life beneath them.

She knew he was tall, of course—she’s walked beside him plenty of times, but it was only today that he’d stood in front of her close enough to make her crane her head and look up at him. But now she notices just how lanky and lean he is. He’s all limbs as he throws his arm over the back of the bench seat, his fingers nearly brushing her shoulder as he twists to look behind him as he reverses the car out of the parking spot, his legs splayed underneath the steering wheel. 

The logistics hadn’t been a part of her late-night imaginings, but now, looking at him out of the corner of her eye as he drives, she wonders how he fits in the backseat. 

She tries to picture it: Rio, lying on top of a girl. Where do his legs go? Maybe if he was on his back—? Or maybe she was picturing it all wrong. Maybe he was sitting down, and he had the girls in his lap? 

The images burn in her brain. Rio’s mouth at another girl’s jaw. Rio’s fingers wrapped around her hip. Rio’s eyes squeezed closed, his lips fallen open. A bead of perspiration sliding down his neck, and it all takes place less than a foot from where she sits now. Beth can smell it, the sweat. In the tiny, trapped, enclosed space of this car, she swears that she can smell it, the evidence of all the car’s history, like it’s seeped into the upholstery. 

Beth’s on fire, and she squirms, readjusting her hips on the seat as she feels her nails dig into the skin of her wrist, leaving behind pale white half moon welts. She sucks in a breath between her teeth, and Rio’s eyes dart over to her, curious.

God, he’s close. If she wanted to, she could reach out and touch him. It wouldn’t even be that hard.

“What?” he asks, fingers flexing on the steering wheel.

“Nothing,” she responds. She looks out the window, and she’s surprised to find they’re close, just blocks away.

It’s only another minute before Rio’s pulling up to the dream house’s driveway, and Beth’s unbuckling carefully, methodically, dragging out the moment, toying with the words at the tip of her tongue: _Tutoring? Tomorrow?_

But then she realizes that Rio’s unclicking his seatbelt, too, and he’s turning the key in the ignition, and the car settles with a hum into stasis. 

“What—?”

“Yo, you mind if I use your bathroom?” Rio asks, lifting his hips to tuck the keys into his pocket.

Beth opens her mouth, but no words come out, just sputtering. It doesn't seem to matter. He’s already sliding out of the car and striding up the walk.

Beth scrambles out behind him, abandoning her backpack, her brain painfully blank as she rushes to catch up with his stupidly long legs.

She just barely manages to get her fingers around his wrist when she huffs, “You can’t come in!” 

Rio whirls around, lifts an eyebrow. “Nah? Why not?” 

Beth stares at him. On this pristine lawn, standing next to a tire swing with the stark white house in the background behind him, he looks out of place in his black jeans and black jacket, his face shrouded by the hoodie.

“Because,” Beth pants, grasping at straws. “Because—um—my mom doesn’t allow it.”

“She don’t like you to hang out with brown kids or somethin’?” he challenges.

“No! No, that’s not it,” Beth backtracks quickly, face flushing red. “Just boys. No boys are allowed over when she’s not home.”

Rio considers her for a moment, then shrugs. Beth’s about to exhale when instead he turns on his heel, leaving her behind as he says, “Well, I promise I won’t tell, yeah?”

“Rio!”

Turning once more, Rio levels her with a challenging look. “There a reason you don’t want me comin’ into your house, princess?”

Beth stares at him wide-eyed. 

“What, you don’t trust yourself to be alone with me?” His eyes trail down her body before flicking back up to her face. He grins, crooked.

It’s stupid. It’s so stupid, but it makes Beth thrust back her shoulders and storm past him to the house, him following close on her heel. She only hesitates when she gets to the door, because god, how crazy _is_ she?

Wouldn’t it be better to just tell him here?

 _But,_ a tiny voice in her head whispers, _you got away with it last time. And it’ll be quick. And then he’ll drop it forever._

Beth puts her hand on the doorknob. “You have to be quick. She’ll be home soon.”

Rio nods, and Beth presses down on the latch, wondering how far her luck stretches.

Far enough, apparently, because the door swings open and then Beth and Rio are standing in the foyer of a stranger’s house, apparently alone. The sun shines through the windows again, but now it just feels like a spotlight, making Beth feel exposed. Her heart pounds loudly in her ears.

“Shoes off?” 

“Just—keep them on and hurry up.” Beth crosses her arms tightly, and then feels ruffled when he stares at her blankly. “What?”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

Beth pales, and then she takes a stab in the dark: “Down the hall.”

Rio walks past her, his Converse padding quietly on the rug. “Here?” he asks, coming to the first door opposite the table with the corded telephone. 

Beth knits her eyebrows, thinking. She tries to map out other house’s she’s been in as a comparison—Ruby’s house opened straight into the living room, so that wasn’t any help. Dean’s, though? He had a foyer. And the first door in the hallway was the coat closet, so—

“No, keep going.”

Rio’s nearly at the stairs when he reaches for a knob on a door on the opposite wall. “This it?”

Staring up at the ceiling, Beth pretends not to hear. But then there’s a quiet squeak, and Rio disappears behind the door, so she figures it must be. She lets out a breath of relief.

Rio probably only spends a minute in the bathroom, but it’s the longest minute of Beth’s life. Every noise sets off an alarm in her body, the hairs standing up on end. But then Rio flushes the toilet and the door opens, and he’s done.

“Alright, let’s go,” Beth hisses, ushering him back out.

But he ambles leisurely, taking in everything. He peeks in the dining room. “So this is your place, huh? Fancy.”

“Yeah, well,” Beth says, voice high-pitched and pleading. “Come on. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Rio takes a few more steps toward her, then stops at the table. He picks up a silver picture frame.

“This your family?”

Beth steps towards him, prepared to drag him out if she has to. “Yes. Now can you please—?”

“Hello?” a woman’s voice calls from upstairs. “Is someone there?”

_Shit._

“Rio, we have to go. _Now._ ”

“These are your parents?” he asks again, pointing at the frame, unmoving.

Beth closes the gap between them, and she wraps her fingers around his wrist, tugging. “Come _on_ —” 

Rio doesn’t budge, but he does hold the picture out to her. A beaming Black couple on their wedding day looks back at her. Beth freezes.

“I guess she don’t care about you hangin’ out with brown kids, huh?”

All of the blood drains from Beth’s face, and she could swear there’s no air in the room because she can’t breathe.

“Hello?” the voice says again, concerned, only now it’s closer, and Beth looks up and she sees a pair of legs coming down the stairs at the end of the hallway. 

Before she can think about what she’s doing, she rips the picture out of Rio’s hand and sets it on the table, and then she’s flinging open the closet door as quietly as she can and shoving Rio inside it, squeezing herself in there with him, shutting the door behind her.

It’s a terrible plan. 

They’re close. Incredibly, insanely close. The closet is overstuffed with things, the floor completely covered in who-knows-what so that Beth’s standing unevenly on top what she guesses are pairs of shoes, her arms steadying herself on either side of Rio’s body. He’s leaned against the back wall of the closet, cushioned by coats. It’s nearly pitch black in here, only the tiniest sliver of light at the base of the door sneaking in. When her eyes adjust, she can just make out Rio glaring at her.

“You don’t live here,” he hisses.

“Shh!” Beth presses a finger to his lips, and oh god, they’re so plump and soft and _wet_. 

Shockingly, it works. Rio shuts up entirely, freezing beneath her touch. 

Beth tries to listen and hear what’s on the other side of the door, but it’s silent. She doesn’t know if the woman’s three feet away or if she gave up and went back upstairs. 

Something shifts beneath Beth’s feet. She feels herself becoming unbalanced, and she moves her hand off his face and onto his shoulder, gripping tightly to try and steady herself. Only then she feels Rio’s hand at her waist, and—and he’s—he's _helping_ her?

Beth’s eyes snap up to his, barely visible in the darkness. She feels his breath on her face, and knows that if she were still breathing, he could feel hers, too.

There’s an inch between their lips, and when did that happen? Only the gap keeps closing, and his lips part, and god, it might be her moving towards him, she doesn’t know, she really doesn’t know, but she’s close enough that she could whisper a secret straight into his mouth if she wanted, and she thinks she feels electricity crackle between their lips the second before they touch—

And then the closet door swings open and they’re bathed in the harsh light of day, staring at the shocked face of a woman who has no idea what’s happening. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eternal gratitude to sophie for beta'ing this and helping me rethink a scene which wasn't working at all (crossed fingers it works a bit better this time around!) and in helping me think more deeply about beth's mom and her effect on both beth & annie. this was an absolute monster of a chapter and i cannot thank her enough for going over it with a fine-tooth comb to push me to keep improving! 
> 
> special thanks for meg as well who gave me some initial pacing feedback and who helped me figure out some rearranging of scenes!
> 
> you both are the best forever and i'm so lucky to have you <33


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